September 2009 Archives

From September 10-12, Notre Dame held a conference called "My Ways Are not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible". The focus of the conference was on the"hard passages" from the Bible, particularly from the Old Testament: instances where God seems to command genocide, rape, child sacrifice, and other such things. I can't remember a conference that I was more excited to see. And it didn't disappoint--it may have been the most rewarding conference I've attended.

Originally, I thought I would live-blog the conference, but because I fell under the impression both that the presentations, along with their responses, would be collected into a book, and that videos of at least the Q&A sessions would eventually be posted to the website (don't quote me on that, though), I decided I would instead post something more impressionistic.

God created the world to exemplify certain values. Someone who propounds a design argument for the existence of God probably needs to have something to say about these values.

Scientists often propound particular models that instantiate a more general theory. These models are sometimes intended to be more realistic and sometimes less, but the hope is that by studying them and by noting the divergence, if any, between model and reality we will learn something about the relevant phenomenon. Some realistic models will be empirically testable and others will not, and scientists of course have a preference for testable models. Thus, an evolutionary scientist might offer a more or less realistic model of the evolution of wings. The model may well predict what kinds of fossils we will find. If the model's predictions are not borne out, this does not in any significant way affect the probability of evolution in general, but studying the model is helpful, and if the model's predictions--assuming it makes some--match observations, so much the better for the underlying theory.

I’d like to try out this small argument for substance dualism. Let a quasi-miracle be a sequence of events that is both (i) remarkable and (ii) extremely improbable. Flipping a fair coin 1,000,000 times and its landing heads 1,000,000 constitutes a quasi-miracle. A chimpanzee at a typewriter producing a 950-page dissertation on anti-realism is another quasi-miracle. Our world is indeterministic, and improbable events occur often. But quasi-miracles do not occur, and certainly do not occur regularly. Suppose you perform some action A and claim that A was done freely. For instance, let A be some deliberate and serious action such as swearing to tell the truth. Now suppose you are asked whether you did in fact act freely in swearing to tell the truth. You answer yes, or you type Y on your computer. I ask you again whether you acted freely in swearing to tell the truth, and again you type Y.

Pruss's clever ontological argument inspired me to offer two ontological arguments of my own:

Suppose God gives to each person the greatest equal probability of being saved. It is true, suppose, that there are two, and only two, groups of people. The members of one group will all be saved and the members of the other group will all be damned. The good news is that one of the groups is twice as large as the other. God gives each person the greatest equal probability of being saved only if he saves every member of the larger group. The epistemic probability that you are among the saved is then about .67 or 2/3.

Now suppose God offers to tell everyone whether she is in the larger group or the smaller group. Would it be rational to accept this information? If everyone learns which group she is in, then the greatest equal epistemic probability that each person is saved diminishes to .5 or 1/2. God must now flip a coin to decide which group is saved, the smaller or the larger. That is the only way to give each person the greatest equal probability of being saved. What should you do?

It is a strange problem since, if we refuse the information, many more people get saved! It is also strange since, you are already in one or the other of those groups. The information doesn’t affect which group you’re in.

[repost]

The 2010 Metaphysics and Philosophy of Religion Workshop will be held at the University of Texas at San Antonio on April 9th-10th (Friday-Saturday) 2010. Many of the papers at workshop represent work in progress. All of the papers are posted well in advance of the conference, and all participants are encouraged to come very prepared for each session. The presenters are listed below. If you’re interested in serving as a moderator for one of these sessions (except the keynote session) you should contact me at michael.almeida@utsa.edu. If you need a program or other documentation for funding, let me know. The charge of moderators is something between chair and commentator. The tentative program follows.

2010 MPR Workshop Program

April 9-10, 2010, All Sessions held in BB 2.06.04, University Room

Friday Sessions, April 9th

Session I 3:30-4:30 pm,

Speaker: Professor Evan Fales, University of Iowa

Session II 5:00-6pm

Speaker: Professor Wes Morriston, University of Colorado

Saturday Sessions, April 10th

Session I 9:00-10am

Speaker: Professor Rob Koons, University of Texas

Session II 10:30-11:30 am

Speaker: Professor Peter Forrest, University of New England, Australia

Session III. 12 noon—1:00 pm

Speaker: Professor Quentin Smith, Western Michigan University

Lunch Break

Session IIV. 3:00-4:00 pm

Speaker: Professor David Johnson, Yeshiva University

Keynote Address

4:30-5:30 pm

Professor Brian Leftow, Oxford University

Valerie Alston told me yesterday that the memorial service for Bill will be on Nov. 2 at 11am in Syracuse, NY. There has been a delay because a grandson has been leading a wilderness expedition. I have no other particulars yet, but Valerie said she will keep me posted, and I will post another message when I find out.

Valerie's eyesight is too poor to read the many wonderful tributes to Bill, but one of her grandchildren is going to read them to her. I will make sure she sees them. Valerie is deeply appreciative of all the support she has received. I am not a blogger, but I have read these tributes with great love and comfort, and I know so many of you feel the same way.

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Updated: 09/29

A memorial service will be held at St. Paul's Cathedral in Syracuse on November 2, 2009 at 11:00 a.m. Fairchild & Meech are in charge of arrangements.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, 310 Montgomery Street, Syracuse, N.Y. 13202.

Jeremy's post did a great job laying out many of William Alston's contributions and helped me understand the role Bill played long after I had left Syracuse and Bill had retired. Thanks very much for your thoughts and reportage, Jeremy. There is one item, though, that I'd like to correct. Bill's dissertation director was Charles Hartshorne, not Wilfred Sellars. In fact, I remember Bill saying that two of the three members of his dissertation committee were Hartshorne and Carnap. And it turned out that Quine was at Chicago on the day of his defense and (somehow) he ended up sitting in. How would y'all like to defend your dissertation in front of those guys? How could one say anything that they'd all agree with? How could one say anything at all?

As for me, my first meeting with Bill Alston didn't go particularly well. I had arrived in Syracuse the week before to begin graduate school. I was at SU primarily because that's where Alston was. I had corresponded with him a bit about the doctoral program there and had been impressed that he had taken the time to write back to a prospective student. Bear in mind that this was in the day of the electric typewriter--there was no email and almost no one yet had a personal computer. So writing a letter meant running paper through the roller, typing out what you wanted to say (undoubtedly having to dab some whiteout along the way), and then addressing the envelope.

Please take note of this excellent summer seminar at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), where my colleague, Mike Rota, is putting on a great program. He and Dean Zimmerman have received funding from the John Templeton Foundation to support a seminar on philosophy of religion and philosophical theology for graduate students and recent PhDs. The seminar, which is the first of three annual summer seminars, covers room and board, and it includes a stipend of $2800 as well! Alvin Plantinga, Richard Feldman, Elliott Sober, our own Alex Pruss, Peter van Inwagen, Evan Fales, Roger White, Thomas Kelly, Alan Love, and Peter Kreeft will all present this summer. The following summers will include other thinkers, such as Eleonore Stump. It is going to be amazing!

Check out the site here:
http://www.stthomas.edu/philosophy/templeton/project.html

I heard late last night about William P. Alston's death earlier in the day, strangely not through any departmental channels but through a friend who never met him. He was one of the professors I've most respected in my entire academic career. He wrote his dissertation with Wilfred Sellars Charles Hartshorne on the work of Alfred North Whitehead but spent most of his career on philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, and epistemology. Along with Alvin Goldman and Alvin Plantinga, he helped spearhead the externalist/reliabilist revolution in epistemology, a tradition that I think took things in the right direction. He also was one of the most important figures in the revival of philosophy of religion in the last four decades from a point where it had become looked upon as a joke to a point where some of the most important philosophers today are Christians or other theists. Alston himself was not a Christian when he began his philosophical career, a path shared with several other notable Christian philosophers (Norman Kretzmann and Peter van Inwagen come to mind).

It was always encouraging to me to think about how successful he was in philosophy given his personality and philosophical temperament, which I think are similar to mine in a number of ways that I'm not like most of my philosophical colleagues. He wasn't a system-builder. He wrote about what he had something to say about but wasn't trying to put together a comprehensive philosophical view on every issue he could have something to say about.

Most of his work didn't involve coming up with brilliant views on cutting-edge issues that no one had ever thought of before (although I think there are a few occasions of that in his work, especially in his most recent work in epistemology). He tended to favor traditional views, sometimes so traditional that the majority in philosophy had left the view so far behind that they considered it a joke until people like him came along to disabuse them of such notions by defending the views in novel ways. His defense of the Theory of Appearing is a good example of this.

Some of the most important philosophical figures are noteworthy for one or both of those reasons (system-building and novel views). Alston, however, filled a role of simply doing good philosophy, often in small but important details. He might see a fallacious argument that was nonetheless popular and apply an important distinction, perhaps one known to the medievals but often ignored by contemporary philosophers, to show why the argument fails. He found elements of competing views that might be compatible and explained why a moderating position might be better than either original view. He applied new arguments in epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, or metaphysics to some problem in philosophy of religion to show why a new trend in a completely different area makes Christian belief more favorable (e.g. his application of functionalism, a recent view in materialist philosophy of mind, to explain how language about God can be literally true even if not used in exactly the same sense as the same terms are used for us).

In my last year at Rochester, there was a steady stream of people in to pay last respects to one they truly respected. I turned down three opportunities to go see him, because I felt it wouldn't be right, since I hadn't known him in his prime. I can tell you though that figures as diverse as Linda Zagzebski and Alvin Goldman came through to pay their final respects, in each case Ed Weirenga facilitated the visits.

In my own case, my philosophizing has been dominated by four phases of Alston's work: 1. Deontogical justification, 2. Levels issues, 3. Combining aspects of internism and externalism, and 4. Pluralism about epistemic desiderata.

Only three other people have made anything like the kind of total contribution to my overall approach to epistemology. And those are all people I worked with very closely.

The result has been that it is not far from true to say that 99% of my epistemological theorizing has been significantly influenced by Alson, even though that theorizing has been quite far flung. Now matter where I went, his tracks were already there.

And of course he made signal contributions in the philosophy of language and philosophy of religion as well. And, what's more, the way he personally influenced multiple generations of philosophers--Al Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, Dean Zimmerman, and Tom Senor just to name a few.

Losing him reminds me of the George Jones song "Who's gonna fill their shoes?" I know I can't, but perhaps if lots of us try we can collectivly fill a portion of the void.

William P. Alston. 1921-2009. Requiesat in Pace

In a piece (based on a post I made on Prosblogion almost two years ago) that has just come out in Religious Studies (with a response by Graham Oppy), I prove a certain theorem.  Say that a property A is strongly positive iff, necessarily, having A essentially is a positive property.  Assume the following three axioms:

• F1: If A is positive, ~A is not positive.
• F2: If A is positive and A entails B, then B is positive.
• N1: Necessary existence is positive.

Theorem T1: Given F1, F2 and N1, if A is a strongly positive property, then there exists a necessarily existing being that essentially has A.

Assume also:

• N2: Essential omniscience, essential omnipotence and essential perfect goodness are positive properties.

Then we get the following result.

Corollary C1: Given F1, F2, N1 and N2, there exists a necessary being that is essentially omniscient, and a necessary being that is essentially omnipotent, and a necessary being that is perfectly good.

But I was unable to prove, without assuming further controversial axioms, that there is one being that is omniscient and omnipotent and perfectly good.  I can now do so as long as one grants the following axiom:

• N3: There is at least one strongly positive property that, necessarily, is uniqualizing.

A property is said to be uniqualizing provided that it is impossible for there to exist in one world two distinct things that have the property.  For instance, being the tallest woman is uniqualizing.  Note that it is prima facie possible Janet to have a uniqualizing property in one world and for Patricia to have the same property--but in a different world.

Theorem T4: Given F1, F2, N1 and N3, there exists a unique necessary being that has all the strongly positive properties.

Corollary: Given F1, F2, N1, N2 and N3, there necessarily exists an essentially omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being.

Moreover, I think a good case can be made (see point 1 below) that N2 implies N3, so in fact, the controversial axioms are going to be F1, F2, N1 and N2, just as in T1.

Shelly Kagan talks about death, immortality and the soul in this series of lectures.

Let's take reformed epistemology, at a first approximation, to be the view that beliefs about God can be properly basic. A belief is basic iff it is not held on the basis of another belief, and a belief is properly basic iff it is basic and has positive epistemic status. I say beliefs about God rather than the specific belief that God exists, because, following Plantinga, it is more likely that the properly basic beliefs humans have will have contents such as God is speaking to me, God is with me now, God is to be praised, and so forth. Each of these propositions would be the obvious basis for belief that God exists, and this belief could be very quickly and easily inferred. This is the sort of stuff Plantinga said in his very early work.

[Modified and Updated 9-7]

Suppose you find yourself in a situation where you can save the lives of each of three persons A, B, or C, but cannot save all. Each is equally worthy of being saved, none is responsible for the life-threatening situation, etc. The Equal Greatest Chance principle (EGC) states that, when all else is equal, we should act in ways that give each person an equal greatest chance of surviving. If I have to choose between saving A and saving B, for instance, and all else is equal, then I should flip a fair coin or otherwise give each a .5 chance at surviving. But now suppose I have to choose between saving A or saving both B & C. Perhaps A is on one island and about to die, and B & C are on another and about to die. I cannot save everyone. In order to give each person an equal chance of surviving, it seems, I have to flip a fair coin. In any case, this is the conclusion of Jim Taurek (‘Should Numbers Count?’ PPA, 1977). Ben Bradley presents what he claims is a decisive counterexample to (EGC) (see Journal fo Ethics and Social Philosophy, March, 2009). Against (EGC) Bradley puts the Save the Greatest Number principle (SGN). In cases that involve saving lives such as the one noted above, we should act in ways that save the greatest number of persons. But what is Bradley’s counterexample to (EGC)? It begins this way,

Here is the example. Batman believes in EGC, and never leaves home without a fair coin. Batman’s nemesis, a murderous bureaucrat named the Joker, has captured three hostages, named Alice, Bob and Carol. The Joker tells Batman the following: “I am going to divide these three hostages randomly into two groups - a group of two and a group of one. I will let you determine which group you wish to save, and I will kill only the members of the other group. Indicate your decision by filling out this form, and checking the appropriate box.” As a believer in EGC, Batman would choose to save the larger group, since that decision gives each a two-thirds chance of survival, and nothing else gives each person a greater chance. If Batman were to flip a coin to decide whether to save the larger or the smaller group, he would diminish each person’s chance of survival to one-half. So far, EGC and SGN get the same results.

Some, but not all, open futurists deny excluded middle for future contingents. Thus, they deny that either there will or there will not be a sea battle tomorrow. Here is an inductive argument to the contrary: A sea battle typically requires a conflict between naval powers that has been brewing for some time. Such a conflict is probably not brewing right now. Therefore, probably, there will be no sea battle tomorrow. But if there will be no sea battle tomorrow, then there will or will not be a sea battle tomorrow (disjunction-introduction). Hence, there will or will not be a sea battle tomorrow. But if there will or will not be a sea battle tomorrow, views that deny excluded middle for future contingents are false.

The marginal cases argument (MCA) is designed to undermine our confidence that the possession of a particular property R is necessary for direct moral standing. The argument asks us to answer this question:

(1) Are you more certain that having property R is necessary for direct moral standing or that human being H (where H is a non-R) has direct moral standing?

The property involved is typically rationality or language-use or self-consciousness or awareness of the future, etc. For any such property R that we select as necessary for direct moral standing, there is some non-human, sentient being that possesses R to a greater degree than some human does. We are embarrassed into admitting that favoring humans over non-humans on the basis of R displays our bias for human beings. But MCA does not go far enough in eliminating bias.

Let N be a very large integer. (Ideally, N would be infinity, but this is a parable.) There are two games which are offered to Fred, the P and Q games, and he must play the one or the other. In each, a fair coin is tossed N times, whether or not Fred plays, and each time it comes up heads, Fred gets something of positive value +V, and each time it comes up tails, Fred gets something of negative value -V. In the P game, the coin tossed is a penny, and in the Q game, it's a quarter. To an ordinary person, the rational choice which game to play would be entirely arbitrary. Moreover, as it happens (based on priors and other evidence), the following three hypotheses are live, and have, let us suppose, equal probability 1/3:

(H1) Fred is perfectly self-interested, and knows exactly how each toss of each coin would go. When two outcomes are equally good, he chooses randomly. (Two sub-hypotheses that I won't distinguish: (a) The coins are indeterministic, and Fred has middle knowledge; (b) The coins are deterministic, and Fred can predict perfectly.)

(H2) Fred is perfectly self-hating (i.e., tries to minimize his own utility), and knows exactly how each toss of each coin would go. When two outcomes are equally good, he chooses randomly.

(H3) Fred has no knowledge of how future coin tosses will go and chooses which game to play at random.

You now observe that Fred chooses the P game. You also observe the first toss of the P game, and see that it's tails, while the first toss of the Q game is heads, and so Fred gets -V, but would have got +V had he played the Q game (suppose that the outcomes in the Q game aren't affected by whether Fred plays or not). You don't get to observe any further steps in the game.

Question: How should your observation affect your probabilities of the three hypotheses?

The qualitative intuitive answer is easy. Your observation does not affect the probability of H3 at all. It increases the probability of H2 by exactly the amount by which it decreases the probability of H1. If, however, H1 were initially more probable than H2, as typically it would be, then the probabilities of both H2 and H3 would be increased.

But the interesting question is as to the details: Just how much do the probabilities change?