...at NewAPPS.
UPDATE: Matthen points to this excellent paper, which argues that evolution favors truth-tracking cognition in a number of cases.
UPDATE: Nicholas McGinnis has a nice follow up post over at Engaging Science.
New(ish) Paper on DCT and the Euthyphro Dilemma
John Milliken, "Euthyphro, the Good, and the Right", Philosophia Christi 11:1 (2009), 149-159.
Abstract: The Euthyphro dilemma is widely deployed as an argument against theistic accounts of ethics. The argument proceeds by trying to derive strongly counterintuitive implications from the view that God is the source of morality. I argue here that a general crudeness with which both the dilemma and its theistic targets are described accounts for the seeming force of the argument. Proper attention to details, among them the distinction between the good and the right, reveals that a nuanced theism is quite unscathed by it.
P.S., Note well the concessions made in fn. 27 (though of course Robert Adams has made them as well in his Finite and Infinite Goods). The defense of DCT thus comes at the expense of denying that morality is essentially dependent upon God (at least on a Finean analysis of essence).
Abstract: The Euthyphro dilemma is widely deployed as an argument against theistic accounts of ethics. The argument proceeds by trying to derive strongly counterintuitive implications from the view that God is the source of morality. I argue here that a general crudeness with which both the dilemma and its theistic targets are described accounts for the seeming force of the argument. Proper attention to details, among them the distinction between the good and the right, reveals that a nuanced theism is quite unscathed by it.
P.S., Note well the concessions made in fn. 27 (though of course Robert Adams has made them as well in his Finite and Infinite Goods). The defense of DCT thus comes at the expense of denying that morality is essentially dependent upon God (at least on a Finean analysis of essence).
Reformed and Evolutionary Epistemology and the Noetic Effects of Sin...
...is the title of an interesting new paper by Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt. Here's the abstract:
Despite their divergent metaphysical assumptions, Reformed and
evolutionary epistemologists have converged on the notion of proper
basicality. Where Reformed epistemologists appeal to God, who has
designed the mind in such a way that it successfully aims at the truth,
evolutionary epistemologists appeal to natural selection as a mecha-
nism that favors truth-preserving cognitive capacities. This paper
investigates whether Reformed and evolutionary epistemological ac-
counts of theistic belief are compatible. We will argue that their chief
incompatibility lies in the noetic e ects of sin and what may be termed
the noetic e ects of evolution, systematic tendencies wherein human
cognitive faculties go awry. We propose a reconceptualization of the
noetic e ects of sin to mitigate this tension.
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