Review of Jack Ritchie's Understanding Naturalism

David Macarthur (University of Sydney) reviews the book for NDPR. Here's the link.

Like me, Macarthur holds to a "liberal" conception of naturalism. The following passage from MacArthur's review captures my sentiments about more conservative forms of naturalism:

"Ritchie's strategy of taking up a position within the landscape of current scientific naturalism, however, leads to a blindspot about the range of viable naturalisms on offer in contemporary philosophy. He misses the possibility of a non-scientific or liberal naturalism that is arguably associated with such leading philosophers as Dewey, McDowell, Putnam and Wittgenstein. Such naturalism lies in the largely unexplored conceptual space between scientific naturalism and supernaturalism. It allows that one can respect science without supposing that science is our only resource for understanding humanity. Not everything that exists is explicable, or fully explicable, by science. There are many things in our everyday world of which there is no complete scientific theory but that are, nonetheless, presupposed by science -- e.g. tables, persons, artworks, institutions, rational norms. A liberal naturalism can more readily do justice to such things. It is also in a better position to ask whether there exist non-scientific modes of knowing and understanding tables, persons, reasons, etc. The best prospects for an account of rational or conceptual normativity ("the hardest task") are, presumably, neither scientific nor supernatural."

The Chemical Brothers - Where Do I Begin?

The Winter 2009 Issue of Philosophia Christi...

... is now out. Here is the link to the table of contents.

Erik Baldwin's Interesting Paper on Plantinga's Model of Warranted Christian Belief

Erik Baldwin is a graduate student at Purdue. He's also a visiting graduate student at Notre Dame, doing research at their Center for Philosophy of Religion. In his paper "Could the Extended Aquinas/Calvin Model Defeat Basic Christian Belief?", (Philosophia Christi 8:2 (2006), pp. 383-399), he raises concerns about Plantinga's model of warranted Christian belief. In the process, he does an excellent job of clarifying Plantinga's account.

P.S., Recall that Erik Baldwin is the one who co-authored this nice paper with Michael Thune (one of his former fellow grad students at Purdue).

New Philosophy of Religion Specialty Journal

The European Journal for Philosophy of Religion is a relatively new journal that focuses on issues in philosophy of religion. Here is the link.

The November Issue of Jobs for Philosophers: Doom

Well, it's official: This is the worst job season since at least the formation of the American Philosophical Association. The publication of the October issue of the APA's Jobs for Philosophers marks the official beginning of the year's philosophy hiring season. The number of jobs listed in that issue is down roughly 50 percent from 2008 (256 jobs, down from 507 jobs), and that was a bad year.

To make matters worse, the newly-released November issue of JfP has just 18 -- 18! -- new positions posted. Guesstimating, if you add to the newly-minted PhDs (e.g., me) the ABDs, the people who didn't get a job the last couple of seasons, and the tenured or tenure-track people seeking to switch institutions this year, there are probably about 1,000 job candidates on the market.

Fuck.

UPDATE: I stand corrected: this is not the worst job season on APA record (see the comments of the anons at 4:44PM (NOV. 7th) and 12:46AM (Nov. 8th).

Link to Videos of the Recent "My Ways Are Not Your Ways" Conference at Notre Dame

Recently, the Notre Dame Center for Philosophy of Religion held an important conference discussing the prima facie (I would say "ultima facie") morally problematic character of the God of the Old Testament (e.g., God-endorsed genocide). The conference was entitled, "My Ways Are Not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible", and many leading figures in philosophy of religion presented papers. The videos for all the talks can be found here.

Review of Gregory Dawes' Theism and Explanation

Bradley Monton (University of Colorado, Boulder) reviewed the book for NDPR. Here is the link.

Stephen Maitzen's New Paper on God and Morality

We've noted Stephen Maitzen's excellent work in philosophy of religion on another occasion, but I'd like to note that he has since written and posted some more nice papers. His most recent paper, "Ordinary Morality Implies Atheism" (European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 2 (2009): 107-126) can be found here. Links to most of his other papers can be found here.

Btw, some time soon, I'd like to get a discussion going on his novel argument in "Anselmian Atheism", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXX, No. 1 (January 2005), pp. 225-239.

Interesting Recent Exchange on the Problem of Natural Evil

Alexander Bird is known for his work on dispositional essentialism and, relatedly, his arguments for the metaphysical necessity of the laws of nature (a view which is growing in popularity among philosophers, I might add).

Recently, Bird had an exchange with Michael Bertrand on the problem of natural evil in The Australasian Journal of Philosophy. The exchange is based on some brief remarks at the end of Bird's paper, "Unexpected A Posteriori Necessary Laws of Nature", Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83:4 (December 2005), pp. 533-548. Bertrand's reply, "God Might Be Responsible for Physical Evil", AJP 87:3 (September 2009), pp. 513-515 can be found here (requires subscription for access), and (the pre-print version of) Bird's rejoinder, "...And Then Again, He Might Not Be", AJP 87(2009), pp. 517-521, can be found here.

I find Bird's reply to the problem of natural evil the most plausible. Unfortunately, as he points out, it comes at a high cost, as it relies on a view according to which the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, which in turn implies that miracles are metaphysically impossible(!).

Excellent Recent Critique of the "Big Bang" Version of the Kalam argument

Pitts, J. Brian. "Why the Big Bang Singularity Does Not Help the Kalam Cosmological Argument for Theism", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (2008), pp. 675-708. Here is the link.

Perhaps it's worth noting that unlike William Lane Craig, James Brian Pitts actually has a PhD in physics.

UPDATE: Commenter "Pastor Tom" has kindly pointed out that Craig has offered a reply to Pitts. Here is the link. I leave it to the reader to decide whether Craig's reply is adequate.

Review of The Agnostic Inquirer: Revelation from a Philosophical Standpoint

Keith Parsons (University of Houston, Clear Lake) reviews the book for NDPR. Here is the link.

Interesting Discussion of Genocide and the Old Testament...

...at Prosblogion. We've noted Wes Morriston's recent paper on genocide and the Old Testament. It's good to see some of his arguments being discussed over there -- and Wes has joined the discussion in the comments.

Non-Physicalistic Materialism: Follow-Up Questions to Those from the Previous Post

Continuing the discussion from the previous post:

There are a lot of issues to untangle and sort out here.

 Let me start with this: Suppose there is just one kind of substance, and it has both ordinary physical properties and informational/representational properties essentially and fundamentally. Suppose further that it's an uncreated, eternal, and at least de facto indestructible substance (since it's a "free-standing", metaphysically independent sort of stuff, and it turns out that nothing else that exists in our world has what it takes to annihilate it). Call this "The Quasi-Spinozistic View".

On The Quasi-Spinozistic view, then, consciousness and other mental properties don't emerge from, and aren't caused by, the physical. Furthermore, no god is required to create such properties, anymore than a god is needed to make its physical properties. Finally, there's no special problem about where this substance came from or why it exists. For it never came from anything -- it's eternal and (de facto) indestructible.

Now given The Quasi-Spinozistic View of substance, here are some of my initial questions:

1. 

What's so implausible about such a picture of substance from a theistic point of view? Is it that we can't get the informational/representational properties without an external cause, like a god? Well, if this is a serious problem, then it's an equally serious problem for theism. For theism likewise entails that informational/representational properties are a basic feature of an eternal substance, i.e., God, and that both they and the substance in which they inhere (viz., God) lack an external cause. 

So theism has no epistemic advantage over The Quasi-Spinozistic View in at least these respects.

2. What's so implausible about it from an atheistic point of view? Is it that the representational properties aren't properly physicalistic, scientifically describable and/or observable properties? Well, that just faults non-physical properties for not behaving like physical properties. And why, in an atheistic universe, should we expect the world to conform to what's convenient for human interests?



So these are just some initial thoughts and issues I have. I don't know whether consciousness is reducible to the physical. All I'm interested in here is this: if it should turn out that it isn't, would that provide even slight epistemic support of theism over naturalism? At this stage in my inquiry, my suspicion is that the answer is 'no'.

What do you think?

Talk Amongst Yourselves

Question:

Is there some special reason to think that non-physical concreta can't -- or even probably wouldn't -- exist if theism weren't true? In particular, why think it's even slightly more likely than not that theism is true if, say, the mental or quasi-mental is a fundamental feature of concrete substances?

Just to be clear: The hypothesis on the table isn't that the mental supervenes upon or emerges from the physical. Rather, the hypothesis is that the mental or quasi-mental is part of the bedrock of concrete reality.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Here is a link to the SEP entry on neutral monism. It also includes helpful descriptions of somewhat similar views (e.g., panpsychism, dual aspect theory, neo-Russellianism, etc.). Non-physicalistic naturalist views of concreta such as these seem to me to pose one sort of problem for apologetical arguments from consciousness to theism.

The Daily Show on "Rape-Nuts"

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Rape-Nuts
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

The World's Flags Given Letter Grades

Comic relief from philosopher Josh Parsons. Parsons grades the world's flags, here. The comments under various flags are generally hilarious (and his criteria are excellent, in my view!).

You're welcome.

The 2010 St. Thomas Summer Seminar in Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology

The 2010 St. Thomas Summer Seminar in Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology

Organized by
Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers)
Michael Rota (University of St. Thomas)

Recent PhDs and current graduate students in philosophy, theology, or religious studies are invited to apply to participate in the 2010 St. Thomas Summer Seminar in Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology. Twenty participants will be selected; each will receive a stipend of $2,800 and will be provided with accommodations and meals for the duration of the seminar. (Regrettably, funding for travel costs cannot be provided.)

Seminar Dates: June 15 - July 2, 2010

Location: University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota

Topics and Speakers

The epistemology of religious belief Alvin Plantinga (Notre Dame) and Richard Feldman (Rochester)

Science and religion Alvin Plantinga (Notre Dame) and Elliott Sober (UW-Madison)

The cosmological argument Alexander Pruss (Baylor) and Peter van Inwagen (Notre Dame)

The problem of evil Peter van Inwagen (Notre Dame) and Evan Fales (University of Iowa)

The epistemology of disagreement Roger White (M.I.T.) andThomas Kelly (Princeton)

Reductionism and the philosophy of biology Alan Love (University of Minnesota)

Writing for audiences outside the academy Peter Kreeft (Boston College)

Application Deadline: Applications must be received by December 1, 2009.

Click here for more details.

Review of (ed.) Dean-Peter Baker's Alvin Plantinga

Edward Wierenga (University of Rochester) reviews the book for NDPR, here.

Jobs for Philosophers

Hi gang,

Sorry for the dearth of posts as of late. I recently (Spring 2009) got my Ph.D. in Philosophy, and this is my first (and, if things go well, last!) serious run on the Philosophy job market, which officially began yesterday with the publication of the October issue of Jobs for Philosophers. Unfortunately for myself and others going on the market, this is the worst job season in a few decades. In any case, polishing my dossier and sending out applications (on top of teaching and family matters) is pretty much all-consuming, and will be so for a good while. As such, posting may well be light for about a month or two.

Wish me luck!
EA

Debunking Canadian health care myths - The Denver Post

Debunking Canadian health care myths - The Denver Post

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Krugman on the State of Conservative Politics

Here.

Italian Scientist Reproduces the Shroud of Turin

Here.

Ok, One More Time, People...

In response to the effects of the California budget crisis on the University of California system, George Lakoff explains how California got into its current mess, and how we can get out of it. Learn it, know it, live it.

Hope!

I saw Hope Sandoval in concert the other night, in promotion of her new album, Through the Devil Softly:




Words fail.

Life's too short not to catch one of her shows -- God knows when she'll be touring again.

Review of C. Stephen Layman's Letters to Doubting Thomas

Tim Mawson (Oxford) reviews the book for Ars Disputandi, here.

Baldwin and Thune's Recent Paper

Here's yet another example of the relevance of the current epistemology of disagreement debate to issues in philosophy of religion. Erik Baldwin and Michael Thune offer a defeater for properly basic belief in God in "The Epistemological Limits of Experience-Based Exclusive Religious Belief", Religious Studies 44 (2008), pp. 445-455.[1]

Here's the abstract:

Alvin Plantinga and other philosophers have argued that exclusive religious belief can be rationally held in response to certain experiences – independently of inference to other beliefs, evidence, arguments, and the like – and thus can be ‘properly basic’. We think that this is possible only until the believer acquires the defeater we develop in this paper, a defeater which arises from an awareness of certain salient features of religious pluralism. We argue that, as a consequence of this defeater, continued epistemic support for exclusive religious belief will require the satisfaction of non-basic epistemic criteria (such as evidence and/or argumentation). But then such belief will no longer be properly basic. If successful, we will have presented a challenge not only to Plantinga's position, but also to the general view (often referred to as ‘reformed epistemology’) according to which exclusive religious belief can be properly basic.

Worth a read!

--------------
[1] Btw, Thune's dissertation is on the epistemology of disagreement. He argues for a moderate view, according to which disagreement between two epistemic peers regarding some proposition P partially defeats each peer's justification for believing that P.

Krugman on the Latest Argument of the Anti-Environmentalists

Here.

Let's fucking do this

Let's fucking do this

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Otte and Plantinga's Recent Exchange on the Free Will Defense

Richard Otte is a philosopher of religion at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work is characterized by applying the probability calculus to issues surrounding the rationality of belief in God. One can find links to many of his papers here.

Otte had an exchange with Plantinga on the latter's famous Free Will Defense (FWD) in a recent issue of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. In Otte's paper, he shows that Plantinga's definition of transworld depravity (TWD) is necessarily false(!). However, Otte goes on to offer an alternative notion that plays a similar role in Plantinga's FWD. Interestingly, Plantinga agrees with Otte's points.

Below are links to the papers:

Otte, Richard. "Transworld Depravity and Unobtainable Worlds", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78:1, pp. 165-177.

Plantinga, Alvin. "Transworld Depravity, Transworld Sanctity, and Uncooperative Essences", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78:1, pp. 178-191.

Paul Waldman on Glenn Beck

Here.

Dennett's Recent Paper on Descartes and the Design Argument

Here is a link to Daniel Dennett's recent paper, "Descartes's Argument from Design", The Journal of Philosophy, Volume CV, Number 7 (July 2008), pp. 333-345.


HT: Ryan

Review of David Sedley's Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity

J.F.P. Wynne (Northwestern University) reviews the book for NDPR, here.

Neil A. Manson

Neil A. Manson is a philosopher at the University of Mississippi. One of his primary research interests is the design argument, especially the argument from fine-tuning. He is the editor of God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science, and is the author of a number of excellent articles on the topic. Interestingly, although he is now a critic of the argument from fine-tuning, he appears to have once been a proponent it. On this, see his dissertation, Why Cosmic Fine-Tuning Needs to be Explained.

One can find his articles on the argument at his department webpage. For those unfamiliar with the argument, perhaps the best point of entry is his paper on the design argument written for undergraduates. After that, take a look at his Introduction to the God and Design volume. It provides a very clear and helpful overview of the key issues involved in the debate over various versions of the design argument, including the fine-tuning argument. From there, move on to his paper, "There Is No Adequate Definition of 'Fine-Tuned for Life". Then give a careful read to the journal articles.

P.S., if you have access to the journal Philosophy Compass, don't miss his article, "The Fine-Tuning Argument". The paper offers a nice overview of the contemporary state of the debate on the argument. The article is very helpful in particular for getting up to speed on recent discussions of the Multiverse Objection and the Normalization Objection to the argument.

The red-crowned crane is a straight con

The red-crowned crane is a straight con

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