Abstracts
(alphabetized by presenter’s last name)
Determining God's Ultimacy
Paul Bali
That
God is an ultimate reality is a thought fairly common in Western theism. Setting aside the idea of God being
ultimate, simpliciter, as somewhat confused or meaningless, I proceed to
consider the possibility of a religious subject coming to ascertain God's
ultimacy in one particular quality: power.
I argue that it is implausible not only that a subject of religious
experience could come to know that the object of his/her experience is an
omnipotent being, but also that an omnipotent being itself could not be
justifiably certain that it is omnipotent.
In other words, even God could not know that he is the omnipotent God of
traditional theism.
Can the
Physicalist Be A Mental Realist?
Justin D. Barnard
Most
physicalists in contemporary philosophy of mind maintain that the truth of
physicalism does not preclude mental realism.
In this paper, I offer reason to think that such a position is untenable
by presenting a modal argument for the incompatibility of physicalism and mental
realism. I argue that if the modal argument
is sound, the physicalist who would be a mental realist is left with few
options, none of which seem welcome: accept rampant causal overdetermination,
reject metaphysical realism, or embrace epiphenomenalism.
The Chicken-and-Egg
Pattern of Christian Arguments for Realism
Carlos R. Bovell
The realism-antirealism
debate touches upon a perennial problem toward which philosophers have devoted
tremendous amounts of attention and reflection. In Christian circles, however, realism has largely won out and
the concentration is mainly upon realist polemic. Against antirealism, a favorite argument strategy has been
deployed with such frequency that it would appear that Christian philosophers
have surmised that they have found a way to contrive irrefutable
arguments. The strategy is that of
‘self-reversal’. This essay attends to
the limits of this logical maneuver and calls for alternate strategies. The author playfully recasts the debate in
light of the chicken-and-egg problem.
Escaping
Hell: Divine Motivation and the Problem of Hell
Andrei A. Buckareff &
Allen Plug
We
argue that God's moral concerns motivate God to act to ensure that the most
just and loving state of affairs obtains in the afterlife. We argue that a
doctrine of hell that avoids the pitfalls of the traditional doctrine of hell
while eschewing strong universalism holds the most promise. On such a doctrine of hell, which we call
"escapism", God maintains an open door policy towards those in hell
(agents having the actual ability to choose to repent). The offer for
reconciliation with God includes no end of opportunities for those in hell to
be reconciled with God. The benefits of such a view are examined and suggest
that escapism is the view of hell that ought to be adopted by Christians.
Peirce’s
Conjectures of Instinctive Reason and the Reality of God:
Undermining
the Evidentialist’s Challenge
Bernardo
Cantens
In
this paper I will present Peirce’s “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of
God” as an argument that cannot be categorized as an objective or subjective
evidentialist argument. I will argue
that Peirce’s neglected argument undermines the evidentialist’s challenge,
since the argument does not meet the evidentialist’s criteria for rationality
and yet Peirce believes the conclusion in the reality of God is rationally
justified. As a consequence, if one
finds Peirce’s argument cogent, then both the subjective and objective
evidentialist’s criteria for determining what is to be considered a rational
belief in the existence of God is called into question. The paper is divided
into three parts. First, I will explain the evidentialist’s thesis and the
objective–subjective dichotomy. Second, I will explain Peirce’s three stages of
inquiry. Third, I will analyze Peirce’s humble argument for the reality of God
and show how this argument can provide a rationally justified belief in the
reality of God without satisfying the objective or the subjective
evidentialist’s criteria.
Kenotic Christology and
Disjunctive Properties
Andrew M. Cullison
In
this paper, I examine The Kenotic Theory of Incarnation. In the first section I
consider Feenstra’s defense of Kenotic Christology. I argue that his versions
of the theory are committed to a troublesome theory of properties and that it
would be a virtue of an Incarnation Theory to avoid such commitments. In the
last section, I suggest an amendment to the Kenotic Theories that avoids
Feenstra’s problems.
Quiescence and Freedom
Ian DeWeese-Boyd
Eleonore
Stump has recently addressed the problem of reconciling God’s operating grace
and human free will in the context of discussing Augustine’s treatment of these
issues. She has proposed a way of
explaining how a person’s will moves from rejecting God’s grace to accepting it
in such a way that it remains free in a in a libertarian sense regarding this
act of will and yet is not itself the source of this good act of will. Stump’s proposal, which she draws from
Aquinas’s treatment of grace and free will, is that the will has three
positions, not two; it can assent to something, it can reject something, or it
can simply be turned off with regard to something, a state that she refers to
as quiescence. When the will is
quiescent with regard to grace, it neither wills grace nor rejects it. Stump’s claim is that when the will is
turned off in this way, God can operate on it, moving it to accept grace. Thus, the will to accept grace is not
produced by the person without grace, a form of the Pelagian heresy, and yet
whether grace operates is ultimately up to the person because whether her will
becomes quiescent, whether she ceases to reject grace or not, is up to her. In this essay, in addition to considering
whether a person has control over her will’s becoming quiescent, I argue that a
person whose will is quiescent in the way Stump describes may nevertheless have
her freedom destroyed if someone operates directly on that will. I argue that by suitably qualifying the
quiescent state Stump describes, such cases can be ruled out.
Can There be a Science of
Sacred Doctrine?
Shawn
D. Floyd
Aquinas
claims that sacred doctrine is a science, or scientia. All scientiae involve demonstrations
containing premises which yield conclusions that are necessary and
certain. The premises of demonstrations
leading to sacred scientia are
the articles of faith, which we derive from Scripture. The idea that we can have a science of
sacred doctrine assumes that Scripture is divine in origin. According to William J. Abraham, the certitude
associated with sacred scientia
requires Aquinas to demonstrate Scripture’s divine origin. Failure to provide such a demonstration
would rob sacred doctrine of its status as a scientia. According to
Abraham, Aquinas’s putative demonstration of Scripture’s divine origin fails
and—as a result—so does the endeavor to establish a science of sacred
doctrine. In this paper, I will show
that Aquinas does not intend to provide such a demonstration, nor does he need
to in order to secure sacred doctrine’s status as a scientia.
A Metaphysical Naturalism is
Doomed (Sort of)
Gregory E. Ganssle
In this paper I press two kinds of criticisms against metaphysical naturalism. First I point out two problems with attempts to characterize naturalism by tying it to the sciences. The second problem with naturalism is the existence of entities that are not naturalistic. Rather than concluding that naturalism is doomed, I look at a kind of response made possible by recent work of Bas van Frassen. Van Frassen argues that naturalism cannot be defeated by the kinds of challenges I raise because it is not a position that makes claims that can be shown to be false. Rather naturalism is a stance. I conclude that even if naturalism is a stance and nothing more, there must be reasons to adopt this stance instead of some alternative stance such as theism. Furthermore, naturalism is a stance in decline.
The Strong and Weak
Arguments for Substance Dualism
Stewart Goetz
In this paper, I briefly contrast two arguments for substance dualism. The first is based on an awareness of the self’s simplicity. The second is grounded in a failure to be aware of the self’s complexity. After contrasting the two arguments, I examine an objection to the first argument by David Armstrong. With the aid of an argument of Roderick Chisholm, I suggest that Armstrong’s objection is successful only if it is assumed that the self is a complex entity.
Irreducible Complexity
Stephen Griffith
Biochemist
Michael Behe claims that recent advances in biochemistry reveal the existence
of submicroscopic biochemical machines which possess a property he defines as
"irreducible complexity". According to Behe, one important fact about
irreducibly complex organs and systems within biological organisms is that
their nature and existence simply cannot be explained in terms of the various
explanatory mechanisms available to modern evolutionary biologists, i.e., by
the principles of neodarwinism. In order to assess the validity of this claim,
it is imperative that we understand the concept of irreducible complexity, but
a quick perusal of attempts in the biological literature to respond to Behe
reveal a great deal of misunderstanding of this concept. In this paper, I make
a modest, non-technical attempt to correct some of these misunderstandings and
the criticisms of Behe based on them.
Internalist Pluralism
Victoria
Harrison-Carter
This
article applies Hilary Putnam's theory of internal realism to the issue of
religious plurality. The result of this application -"internalist
pluralism" - constitutes a paradigm shift within the Philosophy of
Religion. Moreover, internalist pluralism succeeds in avoiding the major
difficulties faced by John Hick's famous theory of religious pluralism, which
views God, or the Real, as the noumenon lying behind diverse religious
phenomena. In side-stepping the difficulties besetting Hick's revolutionary
Kantian approach, internalist pluralism thereby provides a solution to
significant theoretical problems, while doing so in a manner that is respectful
of cultural diversity and religious sensitivities.
Sharon Hewitt
Feminists disagree over the
merits of the “ethic of care” articulated by Carol Gilligan in In a
Different Voice. Does emphasizing women’s propensity to responsibility,
sensitivity, and contextual solutions to moral problems help or hinder the
feminist cause? Applying the ethic of care to abortion only increases the
intensity of the debate. This paper identifies three of the deepest and most
seemingly opposing concerns of women and concludes by weaving them into a
single response to the question of abortion.
Report:
The Christian Studies Cluster at Wesleyan University:
A Model for Cross-Disciplinary Organization of the Study of Christianity at a
Secular University
Steven Horst
shorst@wesleyan.edu
In this session, I will present an overview of the Christian Studies initiative
at Wesleyan University. Christian Studies was created at Wesleyan in 2000,
under the institutional rubric of a "cluster" -- a non-certifying
body within the university that consists in a group of faculty who list courses
related to a given topic (in this case Christianity). I will address the
background concerns about the place of the study of Christianity at a modern
secular university; the institutional rubric under which it was created; its
use as an advising tool for students and their faculty advisors; its utility as
a way of creating intellectual community across campus. I will also provide a
tour of the Christian Studies website at Wesleyan, which both points students
to courses and attempts to set out issues in ways that address our experience
of student misperceptions of the subject-matter.
What is it like to be God: The Theological Significance of Subjectivity
Gordon
Knight
It
is natural to think that finite mortals like ourselves cannot know everything
about God. For God is perfect and we
are not. How can an imperfect, limited
being ever grasp what it like to perfect?
But does this epistemic limitation only work one way? Does the
distinction between God and creatures also present an epistemic limitation for
God? Recently, Torin Alter has argued
that God can know all there is to know about finite experience while retaining
God’s nature as an infinite, perfect being.
I agree with Alter that the claims of some critics of divine omniscience
have been exaggerated. God can know a
great deal about the subjective experience of finite subjects. Nevertheless, there is something about
finite experience, namely its character as finite and limited, that is, in
principle, outside of the ken of God’s understanding. Paradoxically, it is God’s very perfection that places logical
limits on what God can know about what it is like to be a finite creature.
On Blanket Statements About
the Epistemic Effects of Diversity
Andrew Koehl
Religious diversity poses a challenge to the
view that exclusive religious beliefs like “Christ is the unique incarnation of
God” can be justified. Equally upright
and thoughtful people who appear to have equally coherent systems of belief
that are similarly grounded, come up with contradictory and irreconcilable
religious views. Religious beliefs also
seem largely dependent upon culture and environment. Philosophers have made at least six kinds of claims about the
effects of diversity on exclusive religious beliefs, but the variety of
cognitive agents and their circumstances have been largely ignored in the
discussion. Because of this, many
blanket pronouncements about the epistemic effects of religious diversity are
inadequate.
Scoring the Intelligent
Design Debate
Jeffrey
Koperski
With press coverage in the New York Times and curriculum battles in Ohio and Georgia, the Intelligent Design movement has caught the attention of the public and the academy. The main arguments are sometimes hard to track since they contain a hodgepodge of science, philosophy, and theology. This paper maps the terms of the current debate, considers who is winning, and why.
Ethical and
Theological Realisms:
Practical
Reason in McDowell as a Template for Faith in Aquinas
Paul A. Macdonald Jr.
The overall goal of this paper is to
address and then help alleviate a particular theological anxiety: if God
transcends the conceptual schemes in which persons think and make claims about
God, then it seems God cannot be objectively known, given that persons are
confined to the subjective conceptual space in which their thoughts and
statements about God are generated and sustained. Exploiting John McDowell’s claim that it is only by being
initiated into conceptual capacities or the logical “space of reasons” that
persons acquire the ability to be “opened” to the objective layout of reality
(or the “world” broadly construed), I argue (using Aquinas as a model) that it
is by having the virtue of faith infused by grace—that is, by being initiated
into a supernatural set of conceptual capacities and form of reasoning or logos—that persons are “opened” to
aspects or features of God’s own reality.
Angus Menuge
Both
C. S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga have argued that if Evolutionary Naturalism is true,
there is no reason to think that our cognitive mechanisms are reliable. Here I defend two key principles on which
this argument depends. (1) If Evolutionary Naturalism is true, then most likely
epiphenomenalism is true, so it is probable that our intentional states do not
track reality. (2) Even if
epiphenomenalism is false, Evolutionary Naturalism makes it more likely that we
have useful but largely false beliefs than mostly true beliefs. Given either (1) or (2) our cognitive
mechanisms are unreliable. A further
consequence is that Evolutionary Naturalism is incompatible with Scientific
Realism. Given Evolutionary Naturalism, it is far more likely that some form of
Instrumentalism applies to scientific theorizing. If so, scientism, which asserts that science dictates ontology,
cannot be sustained. By contrast,
theism can uphold the rationality and authority of science.
The Irrelevance of Values Pluralism for Political Theory
Nicholas Meriwether
In this essay, I review and
critique William Galston's arguments for values pluralism and liberal pluralism
as providing a philosophical foundation for the concept of negative liberty and
for liberal democracy more generally. I
will (a) argue that Galston's objections to values monism are insufficient to
demonstrate its inadequacy as a general approach to values, (b) demonstrate
that some forms of values monism can protect negative liberty as well as values
pluralism, and finally, (c) show that values pluralism's support for negative
liberty is not as strong as Galston claims.
In Defense of Anselmian
Trinitarianism: A Response to Keith Yandell
Timothy D. Miller
In
recent years there has been increasing interest in attempts to give a
theologically satisfying and logically consistent formulation of the doctrine
of the Trinity. Keith Yandell has made
significant contributions to this effort, and in my essay I respond to one
peculiar and tangential aspect of his contribution. Yandell argues that the Anselmian doctrine of God’s logically
necessary existence is inconsistent with Trinitarian Theism because it
prohibits the Theist from making any metaphysical distinction between members
of the Trinity. He also argues that the
non-Anselmian doctrine of God’s logically contingent existence does allow the
Theist to give an account of metaphysical distinctions. He concludes that in order to be logically
consistent, Trinitarian Theists ought to reject the Anselmian doctrine. My essay demonstrates that Yandell’s
argument is either invalid or unsound, depending on how two of his premises are
understood, and thus fails to show any inconsistency in Anselmian
Trinitarianism.
Neo-Cartesian Theodicies of
Animal Suffering
Michael Murray and Glenn
Ross
While
the general problem of evil has received a great deal of attention by
philosophers, the problem of animal pain and suffering has received relatively
very little. Some have recently
defended the view that animal pain is a necessary condition for securing
greater goods. Few have taken the
alternative, Cartesian view which denies the reality or the moral significance
of animal pain and suffering. In this
paper we develop this latter alternative into four distinct neo-Cartesian
theodicies of animal suffering. We argue
that all four are coherent and defensible given various contemporary positions
in philosophy of mind. Finally, we
argue that the most serious ethical objection to neo-Cartesian theodicies of
this sort fails.
The
Real Problem of Infant and
Animal Suffering
Nathan Nobis
The
problem of infant suffering and death has remained one of the most
intractable problems for theists. Andrew
Chignell has attempted to develop a theodicy for this problem that is based on
Marilyn Adam’s paradigm for theodicy.
However, his discussion repeatedly avoids the argument that,
traditionally, most have thought to be the basis of this problem of evil. Thus, his theodicy provides the traditional
theist with no adequate response to the problem. I argue that since infant suffering is a serious (and
inadequately addressed) problem for any theodicy, animal torture and death is a
serious problem as well. I note that
few theodicies have addressed animal suffering in a manner that takes their
pain seriously.
Natural Necessity and the Will
Mark Nowacki
It
is preferable to admit that the will, while free, is nonetheless subject to natural
necessity. The will cannot exercise its power of choice in a manner contrary to
the judgment of reason; when presented with its object, the will necessarily
chooses that which reason judges to be the better. A presumption in favor of
this theory is established by eliminating its main philosophical rival, viz.,
an indifference theory of the will. William of Ockham, who holds an especially
clear and sophisticated indifference theory, is adduced as an historical
example. Criticisms leveled at Ockham can, mutatis mutandis, be made to apply to other indifference
accounts.
The Openness of God and the Problem of Evil
Michael Pace
Jesus said of Judas that “It
would have been better for that one not to have been born.” When we look at the
world, it may seem to us that Judas is not alone. There seem to be others for
whom nonexistence would have been a blessing. The apparent existence of such
people raises a difficult version of the problem of evil. Why should God allow
such people to exist even though it would be better for them not to? Those who
ascribe to what is sometimes called the “openness view” of God hold that humans
are genuinely free but that God does not (indeed cannot) know the outcomes of
genuinely free actions. I argue that openness theorists are in a better
position to give an answer to this version of the problem of evil than rival
theories that hold that God can know what humans will freely do.
Husserl’s Ontology of Immediate Experience
Aaron Preston
The
central aim of this paper is to relate Husserl’s views to classical and
contemporary debates concerning the nature of consciousness. To this end, it begins with an exposition of
the main elements of Husserl’s ontology of immediate experience, placing
special emphasis on that element which provides for the immediacy of immediate experience. Husserl’s views are then compared to the Aristotelian-Thomistic
view of consciousness as well as to a contemporary view proposed by Laurence
Bonjour. As we shall see, Husserl’s
view of consciousness provides an alternative to the prevailing view which
treats consciousness as linguistic.
Husserl’s views are also relevant to perennial issues in epistemology
and the current realism/anti-realism debate.
Though the connections with these topics will not be explicitly
developed here, they should be fairly obvious to anyone familiar with these
areas.
Aaron Preston
In
this paper, I examine a puzzle that emerges from what has been called the traditional-realist view of quality instances
(a.k.a., property instances). Briefly
put, the puzzle is to figure out how quality instances fit into the overall
structure of a concrete particular, given that the traditional-realist view of
quality instances prima facie seems incompatible with what might be called the
traditional-realist view of concrete particulars. After having discussed the traditional-realist views involved and
the puzzle that emerges from their juxtaposition, I propose to resolve the
puzzle by treating the distinction between a concrete particular and its
quality instances as a distinction of reason, and by adopting a view of
concrete particulars in which the individuating element of a concrete
particular must also serve as its unifying element—a view which is contrary to
that of one of contemporary philosophy’s most active defenders of traditional
realism, J. P. Moreland.
Philosophy as
Ventriloquy: Nietzsche on the Deaths of Jesus and Socrates
Morgan Rempel
As
is the case with his similarly enduring and polymorphous dialogue with
Socrates, Friedrich Nietzsche's career-spanning engagement with the figure of
Jesus is ambivalent in the extreme. In the writings of the last year of his active
life however, this self-professed
“antichrist” is unwavering in his commendation of the Nazarene’s
character and posture vis a vis
his martyrdom. Even more remarkable is the Antichrist’s heretofore-ignored tampering with the most famous death-scene in the Western
tradition. This paper examines Nietzsche's bold manipulation of the celebrated
deaths of Jesus and Socrates, with particular attention paid to the possible
relationship between his re-writing of the famed proceedings at Calvary, and
his remarkably high regard for Jesus’ singular exit from the stage of life.
Simple Foreknowledge and
Divine Guidance
Michael D. Robinson
mrobinso@cumberlandcollege.edu
William
Hasker, among others, argues that simple foreknowledge offers no real aid to
divine providence. In this essay, I hope to reinforce Hasker’s conclusion by
offering argumentation that goes beyond that which he initially
articulated. In particular, I hope to
show that simple foreknowledge neither enables the deity to offer specific
guidance about future events, nor even to know what the best single course of
action for the future will be.
Transmission Causality,
Realism, and the Manifestior Via
G. T. Smith
In
his first or more manifest (manifestior via) argument for God’s existence,
Thomas Aquinas appeals to an Aristotelian Transmission Model of Causality
(TMC). This paper will argue that there
are two consequences which follow from this appeal to TMC. First, any valid reconstruction of the first
way requires a premise stating TMC.
Second and more interestingly, the first way presupposes some sort of
realism about universals, since TMC presupposes realism. These consequences, if established, would be
significant to the possibility of a natural theology along the lines sketched
by Thomas.
John Hare’s Prescriptive
Realism
Kyle Swan
John
Hare proposes prescriptive realism in an attempt to stake out a middle-ground
position in the twentieth century Anglo-American debates concerning meta-ethics
between substantive moral realists and anti-realist expressivists. Hare defends a version of divine command
theory. The proposal succeeds in
establishing the middle-ground position Hare intended. However, I argue that prescriptive realism
can be strengthened in an interesting way.
Perdurance and Divine
Judgment
Patrick J. Toner
After
briefly outlining the differences between the ontological views known as
endurance and perdurance, I argue that perdurance is incompatible with a view
of damnation according to which the state of a person’s soul at the last moment
of her life is the determining factor in the divine judgment. I examine several projected replies to my
argument and find them all inadequate.
If my argument is successful, it shows that any Christian who accepts the
“last moment view” (as well as fairly standard views about God’s justice)
should also accept endurantism.
The
Deception Argument Against Social Trinitarianism
Dale
Tuggy
After laying out the claims and motivations of Social Trinitarianism, I
develop a new line of argument against it. If Social Trinitarism were true, the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would have engaged in wrongful deception via Old
Testament revelation. I briefly consider the strength of the argument and some
possible replies to it, concluding that the premises of the argument are better
grounded than is Social Trinitarianism, making the argument a good reason to
deny that version of trinitarian doctrine.
Anselm on the Compatibility of Grace and Free Will
Stan Tyvoll
In this paper I discuss
Anselm’s attempt to harmonize grace and free will. I first develop his definition of free will as “the ability to
keep uprightness of will for the sake of uprightness itself,” and then move to
his distinction between prevenient and subsequent grace. Prevenient grace, that is, the grace that
comes before upright willing, gives the will both its uprightness as well as
the ability to keep it. Subsequent
grace operates so as to cause specific
acts of upright volition. In the final
section, I explore the plausibility of Anselm’s claim that grace and free will
are compatible, given the role that subsequent grace plays in the production of
upright volitions. I (tentatively)
argue that Anselm does not entirely succeed in showing the compatibility of
grace and free will.
On the Possibility of Freely
Rejecting God Forever
Raymond J. VanArragon
Thomas
Talbott has argued that it is not possible to freely reject God forever, and
that even if it were, God would actively prevent anyone from doing so. In this paper I argue, pace Talbott, that if God did not
prevent it a person could
freely reject God forever, and that God could have good reason not to prevent
it. And I go further: I argue that God
could have good reason for letting a person spend eternity alienated from him
even if she hasn’t freely
rejected him. To set the stage for
those arguments I first explore which of the consequences of a person’s choice
she can properly be said to have chosen, and for which she might be morally
responsible.
Oneself as Another or Another
as Oneself?
Henry Venema
Paul
Ricoeur’s book Oneself as Another,
represents a major achievement in the development of a philosophy of
selfhood. By dialectically linking the
self to otherness, others, and the Other, Ricoeur makes a substantial move
beyond Modern philosophical theories of identity and selfhood. However, contrary to Ricoeur’s own
intentions, his unique formulation of selfhood defined in terms of the
power-to-do, or conatus,
ultimately inscribes the other within the circle of the self-same, and thereby
fails to let the other be other.
Sophisticated
Universalism and the After Life:
Post
Mortem Soul Making in Thomas Talbott's Universalism
P. Eddy Wilson
Central to Thomas Talbott's notion of universalism is a
post-mortem process of soul making.
Individuals graduate to heaven only after they have experienced a type
of purgatory. While critics of Talbott
have focused upon the relationship of universalism to our earthly existence, I
focus upon Talbott's description of post-mortem soul making. In Talbott's view all post-mortem suffering
has instrumental value. In addition the
soul making process is thought to jeopardize neither the goodness of God nor
the power of God. I explore the
underlying assumptions the universalist makes about the nature of humanity and
how God best exercises God's omnipotence.