Recently in Links Category

Leiter's put up a "top ten philosophy books or articles in last decade" post on his blog, and other blogs are doing their own specialized versions. I thought it'd be fun to follow the trend. Basically, write what you think might qualify to be among the top ten books or articles in philosophy of religion in the last decade (starting at 2000) and some reasons why it is important and worth reading.

Warranted Christian Belief's left a big impact; it is probably the most thorough defense of the justification, rationality and warrant of both theistic and Christian belief. (W/r/t warrant, it argues that there is no good de jure argument apart from a good de facto argument against theistic or Christian belief; w/r/t justification and rationality, it argues that there is no good de jure argument simpliciter.) This defense, as far as I've seen, has had little by way of strong objection in the literature. The book also outlines a detailed model for how Christian belief can have warrant. In addition, the chapter on defeaters is a good contribution to epistemology, and the chapter on pluralism has some of the earliest and (in my opinion) some of the best work on the currently hot topic of epistemic disagreement (it includes the now standard charge of self-defeat that equal weight viewers have to deal with). There is also the valuable material on the problem of evil.

In case people missed it, Thomas Nagel gave a positive review of Stephen Meyer's book defending intelligent design. Brian Leiter gives his response here, along with a number of helpful links to further criticisms. Bradley Monton is more sympathetic with Nagel.

Also, William Lane Craig recently debated Fransisco Ayala on the subject of intelligent design. Ayala is supposed to be a prominent anti-ID proponent. From a quick skim of the blogosphere, it looks like Craig thoroughly won the debate. Monton was the moderator and gives his thoughts here. He also provides some further links.

In the latest former-former-theist news, British biographer and poet A.N. Wilson has renounced atheism. His own account occurs here in the New Statesman.

The story is a few months old but, as most readers know and many have commented, I've been incognito this semester.

I find this very interesting for a number of reasons including. 1. It's a token of the type intellectual revert. 2. It's a token of the type British intellectual revert. 3. I read his biographies of Jesus and of C.S. Lewis and found them a bit bifurcated. There seemed to be a half-believing Wilson and a half-belligerent Wilson. 4. I once would have disassociated myself from the sort of case he makes, but now endorse it, and have been experimenting with formalizing it.

Has anyone had time to listen to this: 2009 SPR Presidential address

I'm dying to listen to it, but I defend on Monday.

If, like me, you are *incredibly* strapped for time these days, you might consider looking at the Philosopher's Digest, which right now has a couple of reviews of PR articles.

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.)

Alexander Pruss mentioned this counterpetition toward the end of the previous discussion, but I decided I'd put it up front for more to see.

The distinction the counterpetition strikes me as a relevant distinction; it's actually the distinction I tried to make in the earlier discussion. Here's what I said.

A school can have a policy against adultery without having a policy against those who have an orientation to act adulterously. Probably better, a school might discriminate against those who use pornography without discriminating against those who have an orientation to use pornography. (And the number of the latter is legion.)

But do such policies violate the spirit of the anti-discrimination clause as the original petition suggests? Consider the following scenario. Suppose the APA had a clause which said that you could not discriminate on the basis of whether or not you have an orientation to look at pornography. Now suppose a school has a policy which discriminates against those who view pornography. It's not at all obvious to me that such a school would be violating the spirit of the APA clause which I am imagining.

Are there any disanalogies between my scenario and the current issue?

There's a good deal of discussion on Leiter's blog on the subject of Christian universities (including Wheaton University, Azusa Pacific University, Belmont University, Biola University, Calvin College, Malone College, and Pepperdine University), their policies involving those who engage in homosexual behavior (and drinking and nonmarital sex generally), and whether such universities should be allowed to advertise in the JFP. I thought that many readers of this blog might be interested. Not all of the discussion is very fruitful.

I remember a discussion like this happening a year or two ago. This time, a petition is being started to get the APA to ban those universities from advertising in the JFP.

-edit- My last two sentences are misleading. See the first two comments below.

I saw this post by Colin McGinn (recently linked from Leiter's site) where he ends with quite a strong knowledge claim "We indeed don't know everything, but some things we know quite well--and the complete falsity of religious doctrine is one of them."

William Lane Craig wrote the cover story for this month's edition of Christianity Today. It can be found here. He speaks of a renaissance of Christian/theistic philosophy in secular academia, he reviews some of the main arguments for God's existence, and he talks about the relevance of arguments in today's "postmodern culture".

I've read about the need for good PR for philosophy over at Leiter's blog. One thing I'm happy about is that, in Christian circles, there's been an increasing amount of positive PR for philosophy, primarily by way of Christian apologetics. Lee Strobel's books The Case for Faith and The Case for a Creator feature interviews (and philosophical discussions) with professional philosophers such as William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, and Robin Collins. I rarely meet Christians nowadays who have never heard of Strobel's books, and a surprising number of them have actually read and enjoyed the books. Other Christian apologists who are not active, professional philosophers (e.g., Norman Geisler, Ravi Zacharias, Gregory Koukl, etc.) all speak with high regard for the value of philosophy. More recently, Pastor Timothy Keller's very popular book The Reason for God makes use of arguments that draw right out of the professional literature (mostly from Plantinga and Alston). I've found that many Christians walk away from reading/hearing these apologists with a higher appreciation for philosophy. Some enjoyed the arguments so much that they went into a full time study of philosophy. (I believe that many Talbott graduates fit this description.)

So I'm happy that there is this PR for philosophy in Christian circles. We can hope that this will contribute to good PR for philosophy in society generally!

Here's a link to a recent debate between William Lane Craig and Louise Antony on whether or not God is necessary for morality. It was interesting for me since reading Craig's debates and apologetics works helped get me into philosophy, and Antony was one of my professors when I was an undergraduate at The Ohio State University. Both are moral realists and affirm that there are objective moral truths. I didn't find Craig's arguments that God is necessary for morality to be convincing.

However, here's one of his arguments which has some intuitive appeal and that I'd like to explore. He points out that if God does not exist, then there is no ultimate moral accountability. People will not ultimately get what they deserve, whether this be reward for a life well lived or punishment for horrendous evils. This seems to me to be correct. If naturalism is true, then even if there are objective moral truths, people will not ultimately get what they deserve.

But is there any reason to think the following?

1) If there are objective moral truths, then there will be some ultimate moral accountability.

There is no doubt something less satisfying (at least emotionally) with the naturalistic worldview, but I don't know if I can think of any good reasons to believe that (1) is true. And if (1) is false, there is no problem for the naturalist.

Could we defend (1) just by appealing to intuition? Do most humans have a deep intuition that wrongs must be righted and vice versa? But this intuition is weak at best. I would hope for some more argument. Any suggestions?

There is a relatively new blog on philosophy of time here: http://www.philtimesociety.typepad.com/, and it is supported by the Philosophy of Time Society. There haven't been too many substantive philosophical posts, but I thought that readers/contributors of Prosblogion might be interested in joining the blog (and adding some substantive philosophical posts!) In joining the blog, you also automatically become a member of the Philosophy of Time Society and you are supposed to get a copy of Chronos, a philosophy of time journal. (However, a recent e-mail said that all members might not get Chronos, so I'm not sure if that last part is right.)