Pragmatic encroachment,stakes, and religious knowledge

It is commonly held that epistemic standards for S’s knowledge that p are affected by practical considerations, such as what is at stake in decisions that are guided by that p. I defend a particular view as to why this is, that is referred to as “pragmatic encroachment.” I then discuss a “new argument against miracles” that uses stakes considerations in order to explore the conditions under which stakes affect the level of epistemic support that is required for knowledge. Finally, I generalize my results to include other religiously significant propositions such as “God exists” and “God does not exist.”     

Naming the Unnameable God: Levinas, Derrida, and Marion

In this essay I present the postmodern phenomenological approach of Levinas, Derrida, and Marion to the problem of naming the unnameable God. For Levinas, God is never experienced directly but only as a third person whose infinity is testified to in the infinity of responsibility to the hungry. For Derrida, God remains the unnameable “wholly other” accessible only as the indeterminate term of pure reference in prayer. For Marion, God remains the object of “de-nomination” through praise. In all three, the problem of naming the unnameable God is necessarily linked to how we relate to fellow human beings, to the hungry in Levinas, justice in Derrida, and charity in Marion. I also reflect on the merits and adequacy of phenomenology as such for speaking of divine transcendence.     

Julian of Norwich: Problems of Evil and the Seriousness of Sin

Julian of Norwich emphasizes God’s eternal and unchanging love for humankind. Her visions show how God is not angry with our sins and so has no need to forgive us. God does not shame or blame us but excuses us and plans how to reward and compensate us for sin. In relation to Mother Jesus, we remain dear lovely children who need help, correction, and education. Although these remarks suggest to some that Julian must be “soft” on sin, that she has no adequate appreciation of the worthiness of God or the dignity of human nature, I argue that this is far from the case. On the contrary, she makes Divine worthiness axiomatic and urges readers to live into it. She relocates human dignity not in its intrinsic value but in our centrality to God’s plan. She measures the seriousness of sin in terms of the “real hard work” it takes to rear us up out of it: crucifixion for Christ, the hell of being a sinner and the crucifixion of life-long penance for us. Nevertheless, the brightness of her visions dominates with her assurance that despite the sin-produced sufferings of this present life, all will be well.     

D. Z. Phillips’ problems with evil and with God

It is widely held that the logical problem of evil, which alleges an inconsistency between the existence of evil and that of an omnipotent and morally perfect God, has been solved. D. Z. Phillips thinks this is a mistake. In The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, he argues that, within the generally assumed framework, “neither the proposition ’God is omnipotent’ nor the proposition ‘God is perfectly good’ can get off the ground.” Thus, the problem of evil leads to the problem of God. Phillips goes on to provide an alternative response to the problem of evil, expounded by means of his Wittgensteinian analyses of various concepts drawn from the Christian tradition. I argue that his criticisms of the traditional conception of God either fail outright or are at best inconclusive. I also point out that the religious concepts analyzed by Phillips are not and cannot be the same concepts as those employed in the Christian tradition from which they are supposedly drawn. For the concepts as traditionally employed presuppose the actual existence and activity of precisely the sort of being that, according to Phillips, “God cannot be.”     

How to be a structuralist all the way down

This paper considers the nature and role of axioms from the point of view of the current debates about the status of category theory and, in particular, in relation to the “algebraic” approach to mathematical structuralism. My aim is to show that category theory has as much to say about an algebraic consideration of meta-mathematical analyses of logical structure as it does about mathematical analyses of mathematical structure, without either requiring an assertory mathematical or meta-mathematical background theory as a “foundation”, or turning meta-mathematical analyses of logical concepts into “philosophical” ones. Thus, we can use category theory to frame an interpretation of mathematics according to which we can be structuralists all the way down.     

Response to Ted Peters’ “Models of God”

In “Models of God,” Ted Peters discusses a methodology for formulating and evaluating models of God, surveys nine models, and proposes one that he entitles “Eschatological Panentheism.” This paper provides critical comments on Peters’ methodological claims, taxonomy of models of God, and specific proposal. This paper has been delivered during APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.Both Peters’ “Models of God” and these comments were presented at the “Models of God” mini-conference at the Pacific Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association in April of 2007.     

Paying the cost of skeptical theism

In this paper I show that two arguments for the inconsistency of skeptical theism fail. After setting up the debate in “Introduction” section, I show in “The initial debate” section why Mylan Engel’s argument (Engel 2004) against skeptical theism does not succeed. In “COST” section I strengthen the argument so that it both avoids my reply to Engel and parallels Jon Laraudogoitia’s argument against skeptical theism (Laraudogoitia 2000). In “COST*” section, I provide three replies—one by an evidentialist theist, one by a closure-denying theist, and one by a necessitarian theist, and argue that the necessitarian’s reply successfully rebuts the inconsistency charge. I conclude that skeptical theism which accepts God’s necessary existence is immune to both kinds of arguments for its inconsistency.     

Prayer as Therapeutic Process Toward Transforming Destructiveness Within a Spiritual Direction Relationship

This article will expand previous conceptualizations (Kuchan, Presence Int J Spiritual Dir 12(4):22–34, 2006; J Religion Health 47(2):263–275, 2008; J Pastoral Care Counsel, forthcoming) of what might be occurring during a prayer practice that creates space within a spiritual direction relationship for the creation of inner images that reveal a person’s unconscious relational longings and co-created representations of God that seem to facilitate therapeutic process toward aliveness. In previous articles, I suggest one way to understand the prayer experience is through a lens of Winnicottian notions of transitional space, illusion, and co-creation of God images. This article expands on these ideas to include an understanding of God as Objective Other (Lewis, The four loves, 1960) interacting with a part of a person’s self (Jung, in: The structure and dynamics of the psyche, collected works 8, 1934; Symington, Narcissism, a new theory, 1993) that has capacity for subjectivity (Benjamin, Like subjects, love objects: Essays on recognition and sexual difference, 1995) and co-creation (Winnicott, Home is where we start from: Essays by a psychoanalyst, 1990), of inner representations of God (Ulanov, Winnicott, god and psychic reality, 2001). I also expand on a notion of God as “Source of aliveness” by integrating an aspect of how Symington (Narcissism, a new theory, 1993) thinks about “the lifegiver,” which he understands to be a mental object. After offering this theoretical expansion of the prayer practice/experience, one woman’s inner representations of self and God are reflected upon in terms of a therapeutic process toward transforming destructiveness, utilizing ideas from Winnicott, Kohut, and Benjamin.     

Ordinary experience and the epoché: Husserl and Heidegger versus Rosen (and Cavell)

In various publications, Stanley Cavell and Stanley Rosen have emphasized the philosophical importance of what they both call “the ordinary.” They both contrast their recovery of “the ordinary” with traditional philosophy, including the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl. In this paper, I address Rosen’s claims in particular. I argue that Rosen turns the real situation on its head. Contra Rosen, it is not the case that the employment of Husserl’s epoché distorts the authentic voice of “the” ordinary—a voice that is clearly audible only from within everyday life. For (pace both Cavell and Rosen) there is no single “voice” of the ordinary: There are many such “voices,” not all of which are to be relied upon. Therefore, if we want to achieve an adequate grasp of ordinary experience, and Rosen does want this, we precisely need the epoché to curtail the misleading messages of certain other “voices of the ordinary.” Moreover, and somewhat surprisingly, this positive evaluation of the Husserlian epoché finds support in Heidegger’s writings from the twenties. I argue that Heidegger, too, believed that the epoché was an indispensable tool for the philosophical attempt to capture ordinary experience.     

Wittgenstein and Basic Moral Certainty

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein’s reflections bring into view the phenomenon of basic certainty. He explores this phenomenon mostly in relation to our certainty with regard to empirical states of affairs. Drawing on these seminal observations and reflections, I extend the inquiry into what I call “basic moral certainty”, arguing that the latter plays the same kind of foundational role in our moral practices and judgements as basic empirical certainty does in our epistemic practices and judgements. I illustrate the nature and significance of basic moral certainty via critical examination of contemporary philosophical “explanations” of the wrongness of killing. These pseudo explanations, as I show them to be, will be seen to founder in a similar manner to Moore’s “Proof” of an external world, that is, in a manner that discloses the phenomenon of basic (moral) certainty.     

Structural correspondence between theories and convergence to truth

While “scientism” is typically regarded as a position about the exclusive epistemic authority of science held by a certain class of “cultured despisers” of “religion”, we show that only on the assumption of this sort of view do purportedly “scientific” claims made by proponents of “intelligent design” appear to lend epistemic or apologetic support to claims affirmed about God and God’s action in “creation” by Christians in confessing their “faith”. On the other hand, the hermeneutical strategy that better describes the practice and method of Christian theologians, from the inception of theological reflection in the Christian tradition, acknowledges the epistemic authority of the best available tests for truth in areas of human inquiry such as science and history. But this strategy does not assume that such tests, whose authority must be regarded as provisional, provides authority for the warrant of affirming claims constituting the confessed “faith”. By attributing theological import to claims advanced by appeal to the best available tests for truth in the practice of science, supporters of ID not only confuse the epistemic authority of these tests with the normative authority of a faith community’s confessional identity, but impute to scientific tests for truth a sort of authority that even goes beyond the “methodological naturalism” against which they counterpose their claims.     

Philosophical Themes in Schleiermacher’s Christology

Philosophical foundations of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s christology are found in his rejection of the likeness theology found in many medieval theologians and in German rationalist philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Leibniz and Kant. Instead, Schleiermacher offers a theology of divine otherness, as an interpretation of religious consciousness as awareness of oneself as “absolutely” (i.e., totally and unconditionally) dependent. On this basis all that we can characterize of that on which we are absolutely dependent (God) is its causality. Hence, Schleiermacher argues, Christian theology must not speak of a “nature” of God, but only of a causality of God, as present in Christ in a special way. It is argued that he identifies this divine causality as love (that is, as a causality tending toward human redemption), and as identical with Christ’s human love, on the basis of a teleology known in Christian experience of redemption.     

In Defense of Imperative Inference

“Surrender; therefore, surrender or fight” is apparently an argument corresponding to an inference from an imperative to an imperative. Several philosophers, however (Williams 1963; Wedeking 1970; Harrison 1991; Hansen 2008), have denied that imperative inferences exist, arguing that (1) no such inferences occur in everyday life, (2) imperatives cannot be premises or conclusions of inferences because it makes no sense to say, for example, “since surrender” or “it follows that surrender or fight”, and (3) distinct imperatives have conflicting permissive presuppositions (“surrender or fight” permits you to fight without surrendering, but “surrender” does not), so issuing distinct imperatives amounts to changing one’s mind and thus cannot be construed as making an inference. In response I argue inter alia that, on a reasonable understanding of ‘inference’, some everyday-life inferences do have imperatives as premises and conclusions, and that issuing imperatives with conflicting permissive presuppositions does not amount to changing one’s mind.     

列维纳斯面对康德、黑格尔、海德格尔——当代哲学关于"存在论"的争论

Levinas subverts the traditional “ontology-epistemology,” and creates a “realm of difference,” the realm of “value,” “ethic,” and “religion,” maintaining that ethics is real metaphysics. According to him, it is not that “being” contains the “other” but the other way round. In this way, the issues of ethics are promoted greatly in the realm of philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not intend to deny “ontology” completely, but reversed the relationship between “ontology (theory of truth)” and “ethics (axiology),” placing the former under the “constraint” of the latter. Different from general empirical science, philosophy focuses more on issues irrelevant to ordinary empirical objects; it does have “objects,” though. More often than not, the issues of philosophy cannot be conceptualized into “propositions”; nevertheless, it absolutely has its “theme.” As a discipline, philosophy continuously takes “being” as its “theme” and “object” of thinking. The point is that this “being” should not be understood as an “object” completely. Rather, it is still a “theme-subject.” In addition to an “object,” “being” also manifests itself in an “attribute” and a kind of “meaning” as well. In a word, it is the temporal, historical, and free “being” rather than “various beings” that is the “theme-subject” of philosophy. Translated by Zhang Lin from Wen Shi Zhe 文史哲 (Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy), 2007, (1): 61–70     

Omnibenevolence and Eternal Damnation

In “Omnibenevolence and Eternal Damnation”, I consider whether it is consistent to hold both that God is omnibenevolent and that he infinitely punishes human beings for the commission of finite transgressions. In exploring this problem, I discuss the utilitarian and retributive notions of punishment and justice, the possible mitigating effect of forewarning, and differing conceptions of the nature of the relationship of God to human beings. My conclusion is that it is inconsistant to hold both of these beliefs.     

Similarity, alignment, and conceptual combination: Comment on Estes and Glucksberg

In their paper “Interactive Property Attribution in Concept Combination,” Estes and Glucksberg (2000) suggest an alternative to the alignment view of property interpretation— one based on salience and relevance of features. I suggest that alignment as well as feature salience and relevance are crucial to property interpretation. In making their claims, Estes and Glucksberg also assume that similarity has inverse effects on two important ways of interpreting combinations (i.e., property and relation interpretations). I show that this assumption does not generally hold and provide an alternative explanation for their results (one based on the plausibility of relation interpretations).     

Pornography and sexual aggression

This paper reviews work on the relation between pornography and sexual aggression, covering experimental research on arousal, attitudes, and laboratory aggression, and some correlational studies. The termpornography is intended to cover the materials used in the relevant research, although not all of these would necessarily be seen as “pornographic.” The main body of the review is divided between “aggressive” and “not specifically aggressive” pornography, with some consideration in the discussion of the nature of supposedly “nonaggressive” pornography. In the case of sexually aggressive pornography, a variety of undesirable effects have been observed. Males show equal sexual arousal to pornographic rape depictions and consenting intercourse depictions under certain “disinhibiting” circumstances, such as anger or depicted victim pleasure, and these disinhibitors can also produce increased laboratory aggression against female targets by males exposed to aggressive pornography. Aggressive and, to some extent, not specifically aggressive pornography have also been found to increase the endorsement of attitude statements that are supportive of sexual aggression. The paper concludes with a discussion of ethical considerations, possible psychological bases of the effects, and the question of censorship. It is concluded that although several types of materials may produce behavioral orientation toward, and/or attitudinal support for, sexual aggression, this is a function of aggression and dominance themes rather than the explicitness of the sexual cues. These themes extend beyond explicit pornography, through extremely violent stimuli that lack explicit sexual elements, to widely consumed “normal” films and reading matter.     

The uses and misuses of attribution theory

This article is based on the view that attribution theory in the psychology of religion does not offer for use, or imply, the evaluative methodological position of “misattribution” that is assumed by Stephen Kent in his study of the Children of God in the Spring, 1994 issue of this journal. Members of the Children of God, or The Family, have not, the writer thinks, been duped in their struggle to construct meaning, control and esteem together. That members of this new religion have successfully attributed these values to their communal religious life is especially evident given the courage and patience with which they have endured and met allegations of child (sexual) abuse, all of which have proven false in courts world-wide. Thus, the use of “misattribution” in such studies in the psychology of religion is unwarranted and methodologically fallacious in the view of this author.     

Must All be Saved? A Kierkegaardian Response to Theological Universalism

In this paper, I consider how a Kierkegaardian could respond critically to the question of strong theological universalism, i.e., the belief that all individuals must eventually be reconciled to God and experience everlasting happiness. A Kierkegaardian would likely reject what Thomas Talbott has called “conservative theism,” but has the resources to mount a sustained attack on the view that all individuals must experience everlasting happiness. Some have seen that Kierkegaard has some potential in this regard, but a full Kierkegaardian response to strong theological universalism has yet to be given. In this paper, I give such an account. That God could create beings free over against himself is the cross which philosophy could not bear but upon which it has remained hanging. – Kierkegaard