This work investigates worship and formation in view of Christian anthropology, particularly union with Christ.

-/- The term “natural religion” is sometimes taken to refer to a pantheistic doctrine according to which nature itself is divine. “Natural theology”, by contrast, originally referred to (and still sometimes refers to)[1] the project of arguing for the existence of God on the basis of observed natural facts. -/- In contemporary philosophy, however, both “natural religion” and “natural theology” typically refer to the project of using all of the cognitive faculties that are “natural” to human beings—reason, sense-perception, introspection—to investigate (...) religious or theological matters. Natural religion or theology, on the present understanding, is not limited to empirical inquiry into nature, and it is not wedded to a pantheistic result. It does, however, avoid appeals to special non-natural faculties (ESP, telepathy, mystical experience) or supernatural sources of information (sacred texts, revealed theology, creedal authorities, direct supernatural communication). In general, natural religion or theology (hereafter “natural theology”) aims to adhere to the same standards of rational investigation as other philosophical and scientific enterprises, and is subject to the same methods of evaluation and critique. Natural theology is typically contrasted with “revealed theology”, where the latter explicitly appeals to special revelations such as miracles, scriptures, and divinely-superintended commentaries and creedal formulations. (See DeCruz and DeSmedt 2015) -/- Philosophers and religious thinkers across almost every epoch and tradition (Near Eastern, African, Asian, and European) have engaged the project of natural theology, either as proponents or critics. The question of whether natural theology is a viable project is at the root of some of the deepest religious divisions: Shi’ite thinkers are optimistic about reason’s ability to prove various theological and ethical truths, for instance, while Sunnis are not; Roman Catholic theologians typically think that reason provides demonstrations of the existence of God, while many Protestant theologians do not. Unlike most of the topics discussed in an encyclopedia of philosophy, this is one over which wars have been fought and throats have been cut. -/- The most active discussions of natural theology in the West occurred during the high medieval period (roughly 1100–1400 C.E.) and the early modern period (1600–1800 C.E.). The past few decades have witnessed a revival of natural theological debate in the public sphere: there are now institutes promoting “Intelligent Design Theory”, popular apologetics courses, campus debates between believers and agnostics, a “New Atheist” movement, Youtube debates between apologists and atheists regarding new books in natural theology (such as the one between Nathan Lewis and Bernie Dehler on the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology),[2] and TED talks by famous atheists on how to resist natural religion (such as the one by Richard Dawkins in February 2002).[3] -/- Among professional philosophers (who aren’t typically part of these more popular debates), arguments over our ability to justify positive or negative answers to religious questions have become fairly technical, often employing sophisticated logical techniques in an effort to advance the discussion instead of retreading the same old ground. The prestigious Gifford Lectures series hosted by a consortium of Scottish universities, however, has tried to feature new but still accessible work in natural theology for over 100 years (it too has a Youtube channel!)[4] -/- In this article, we aim to avoid most the more recent complexities but also explain their origins by focusing on some central developments in the early modern period that helped to frame contemporary natural theological debates. We are focused here only on theoretical arguments (both a priori and a posteriori or empirical ones). It is controversial whether moral arguments are also part of natural theology, but we set them aside here (see also the entry on God, arguments for the existence of: moral arguments). (shrink)

The 2021 Gifford Lectures by Oliver O'Donovan evaluate the state of ethics as a discipline and its relationship to theology.

The vast amount of suffering in the world is often held as a particularly powerful reason to deny that God exists. Now, one of the world's most distinguished philosophers of religion presents his own position on the problem of evil. Highly accessible and sensitively argued, Peter van Inwagen's book argues that such reasoning does not hold: his conclusion is not that God exists, but that suffering cannot be shown to prove that He does not.

A deliberate historical examination of the conception of the good life entertained, and taught by the famous moral leaders of mankind : Zarathustra, The Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad, Socrates, Plato, the Stoics, The Jewish prophets, and Jesus Christ.

The Gifford Lectures were established in 1885 at the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh to promote the discussion of 'Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term - in other words, the knowledge of God', and some of the world's most influential thinkers have delivered them. The 1901–2 lectures given in Edinburgh by American philosopher William James are considered by many to be the greatest in the series. The lectures were published in book form in (...) 1902 and have been reprinted many times. James, who was educated in the United States and Europe, and spent much of his career teaching philosophy at Harvard, was very influential in the development of modern psychology, and in these twenty lectures he explores the personal experience of religion. Some of the topics include religion and neurology, 'the sick soul', saintliness, and mysticism. (shrink)

IN 1959 and 1960 I gave the Gifford Lectures in the University of St. Andrews. The lectures were called 'Norms and Values, an Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Morals and Legislation'. The present work is substantially the same as the content of the second series of lectures, then advertised under the not very adequate title 'Values'. It is my plan to publish a revised version of the content of the first series of lectures, called 'Norms', as a separate (...) book. The two works will be independent of one another. (shrink)

J.N. Findlay was a South African philosopher who published from the late 1940s into the 1980s. He had a prestigious international academic career, holding many academic posts around the world. This article uses a textual comparative approach and focuses on Findlay’s Gifford Lecture at St Andrews University between 1965 and 1970. The objective of the article is to highlight the extent to which Findlay’s philosophical writings were influenced by Mahāyāna Buddhism. Although predominantly a Platonist, Findlay drew influence from Asian (...) philosophy and religion, particularly Mahāyāna Buddhism. In these lectures, he applies the metaphor of the Platonic Cave to investigate Hegelian and Husserlian approaches to knowledge. Though he was a leading Hegel and Husserl scholar, his reading of these two philosophers is strongly influenced by Mahāyāna Buddhism, resulting in a unique mystical interpretation of these two philosophers. Revisiting Findlay’s writings is significant for two reasons; firstly, he investigated Buddhism prior to the Asian religions being included in Religious Studies departments’ purview in South African universities, and secondly, his interpretation of two prominent Western philosophers along Buddhist lines provides an early attempt at decolonising the predominance of Western philosophical views of knowledge.Contribution: This contribution forms part of a larger collection of essays investigating philosophical works that have had a significant impact on the study of religion. This contribution investigates the Buddhist influence on J.N. Findlay’s philosophical readings of Husserl and Hegel. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Friedrich von Hügel is justifiably regarded as one of the leading philosophers of religion of the twentieth century. He was born of a German- Austrian father and a Scottish mother and spent most of his life in England. He was fluent in four languages and corresponded with scholars from a half dozen European countries. Educated at home he became a famous philosopher and was granted honorary degrees from St. Andrews and Oxford and was chosen to give the Gifford (...) Lectures. While he is remembered for an extraordinary book on mysticism, he wrote on many other aspects of philosophy. He was close to a number of scholars who at first glance seemed rather different from him – especially the German Protestant Ernst Troeltsch and the Scottish philosopher Norman Kemp Smith. It is through his connections with them and by his works that one can gain an understanding of von Hügel's philosophy. His philosophy was often focused on religion but it was expansive enough to incorporate epistemology, ethics, and even metaphysics. (shrink)

It is one of the many merits of the book that the greater part of it--in fact, all of its twenty-five chapters with the exception of XVI-XVIII--can be read by any intelligent reader with the necessary persistence. It has been reconstructed from Gifford Lectures given at the University of St. Andrews, and Professor Paton is one of the few lecturers on this foundation who has adapted himself to Lord Gifford's direction that the lectures "should be open to the (...) whole community without matriculation." There can rarely have been a more successful attempt to speak of deep and difficult things in simple and dignified language. (shrink)

A prominent analytic philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, here writes on one of our biggest debates—the compatibility of science and religion. I will begin this review by summarizing the contents of the book. I will then comment specifically on certain entailments of the title and give some general constructive criticisms of the text. Finally, I will remark about its potential readership. Notably, this book originated as Gifford Lectures, entitled “Science and Religion: Conflict or Concord?” at the University of St. Andrews in (...) 2005.Plantinga’s overall theme is that there is a superficial conflict but deep concord between science and religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism. In the preface, Plantinga stipulates that one can be an atheist without rising to the full heights of naturalism, but one cannot be a naturalist without being an atheist . In Part I, composed of four chapters considering Al .. (shrink)

The distance in conceptual space between the philosophical pragmatism of William James and the narrative theologies of Hans Frei and Stanley Hauerwas would appear at first glance to be significant. Hauerwas himself has measured that distance in public, when his extended critique of James supplied a good portion of the agenda for his Gifford Lectures, delivered in 2001 at St. Andrews and subsequently published as With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology. In this book, (...) Jacob Goodson dramatically closes the distance, appealing consistently to James's pragmatism as a resource not only for understanding the thought of contemporary narrative theologians but also for productively... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:130 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY statesmen who, for reasons of international politics, would wish this to be so; but if it were so, it would not in itself mean that American philosophy was any better. Although it is a useful literary device to select one theme by which to discuss major figures in a given period, and while the particular theme that Smith has selected is fairly appropriate (once we (...) have reconciled ourselves to the loss of Santayana), it is, I think, a mistake to overlook the diversity that has characterized American philosophic effort from colonial days to the present. But these criticisms, even if just, cannot detract from an extremely wellorganized, beautifully expressed, and immensely readable discussion of four or five American philosophers. Whether there is one spirit or several, its (or theirs) expression in American philosophers has been handsomely dealt with by Professor Smith. GERALD RUNKLE Southern Illinois University The Varieties of Goodness. By Georg Henrik von Wright. (New York: The Humanities Press, International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method [12], 1963. Pp. xiv + 222. $5.50.) To review this volume critically and adequately is out of the question here; it is a major contribution to the theory of values and deserves to be studied carefully from this point of view. Here we can merely call attention to its historical significance and relation to other classics. It already has won a place in the history of the analysis of the good and should take its place in the series of classics, especially in the series which von Wright himself suggests--the ethical writing of Aristotle, Kant, and G. E. Moore. The relation to Aristotle is most evident and most rewarding, and the following comments are made in order to stress this historical relation. In 1959 and 1960 the author delivered the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews and entitled them "Norms and Values, an Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Morals and Legislation." This volume contains the second series, the one on values; the first, on norms, is to follow. The fact that the lectures on norms came first and this publication on values comes first is philosophically significant. A system of ethics, according to von Wright, is a body of normative concepts whose aim is practical rather than theoretical. But this volume, he insists, is not a system of ethics but an inquiry into how judgments of value are true or false. This conceptual analysis of the good lays a "conceptual foundation" for a theory of norms. Values and norms are definitely distinguished and given independent analyses. The transition from BOOK REVIEWS 131 an analysis of the varieties of goodness to the theory of norms is indicated in the last three chapters (VIII, 'good' and 'must'; IX, Duty; X, Justice), but the theory itself is to come in the second volume, based on the first series of the Gifford Lectures. Both volumes are intended as "conceptual analyses": instrumental value, technical excellence, beneficence, hedonic good, good man, good action, etc. --these varieties of good are treated here not as "states of affairs" but as concepts (p. 91). Though the general range of subject-matter is similar to that of Aristotle's Ethics, von Wright wishes to be clear in distinguishing between the concepts or judgments of goodness and the actual affairs of morals and legislation, a distinction which is ambiguous in Aristotle. Subjectmatter for Aristotle is "'legomena" and in practical or teleological sciences (such as is the case of this volume) the legomena (things-said) become in effect prolegomena. But for von Wright a philosophical analysis should concern itself not with the arts of morals and politics themselves but solely with their "conceptual foundations." The notion that practical affairs have conceptual foundations (not mere formulations) is characteristic of contemporary analysis and would probably be repudiated by Aristotle, who was careful to keep legomenaand phenomena intimately related; if either were foundational to the other, the arts themselves and not their concepts or "verbalizations " would be the basic factor. It is significant that even in von Wright's meticulous analysis, the distinction between the concepts and the affairs conceptualized is less evident in the later chapters, and the problems of the true... (shrink)

What is the function of cognition? On one influential account, cognition evolved to co-ordinate behaviour with environmental change or complexity. Liberal interpretations of this view ascribe cognition to an extraordinarily broad set of biological systems—even bacteria, which modulate their activity in response to salient external cues, would seem to qualify as cognitive agents. However, equating cognition with adaptive flexibility per se glosses over important distinctions in the way biological organisms deal with environmental complexity. Drawing on contemporary advances in theoretical biology (...) and computational neuroscience, we cash these distinctions out in terms of different kinds of generative models, and the representational and uncertainty-resolving capacities they afford. This analysis leads us to propose a formal criterion for delineating cognition from other, more pervasive forms of adaptive plasticity. On this view, biological cognition is rooted in a particular kind of functional organisation; namely, that which enables the agent to detach from the present and engage in counterfactual inference. (shrink)

This paper empirically investigates one aspect of the folk concept of time by testing how the presence or absence of directedness impacts judgements about whether there is time in a world. Experiment 1 found that dynamists, showed significantly higher levels of agreement that there is time in dynamically directed worlds than in non-dynamical non-directed worlds. Comparing our results to those we describe in Latham et al., we report that while ~ 70% of dynamists say there is time in B-theory worlds, (...) only ~ 45% say there is time in C-theory worlds. Thus, while the presence of directedness makes dynamists more inclined to say there is time in a world, a substantial subpopulation of dynamists judge that there is time in non-directed worlds. By contrast, a majority of non-dynamists judged that there was time in both growing block worlds and C-theory worlds, with no significant differences between the means. Experiment 2 found that when participants are only presented with non-dynamical worlds—namely, a directed world and a non-directed world—they report significantly higher levels of agreement that there is time in B-theory worlds. However, the majority of participants still judge that there is time in C-theory worlds. We conclude that while the presence of directedness bolsters judgements that there is time, most people do not judge it to be necessary for time. (shrink)

Prior to Kripke’s seminal work on the semantics of modal logic, McKinsey offered an alternative interpretation of the necessity operator, inspired by the Bolzano–Tarski notion of logical truth. According to this interpretation, ‘it is necessary that A’ is true just in case every sentence with the same logical form as A is true. In our paper, we investigate this interpretation of the modal operator, resolving some technical questions, and relating it to the logical interpretation of modality and some views in (...) modal metaphysics. In particular, we present an hitherto unpublished solution to problems 41 and 42 from Friedman’s 102 problems, which uses a different method of proof from the solution presented in the paper of Tadeusz Prucnal. (shrink)

We develop a theory of necessity operators within a version of higher-order logic that is neutral about how fine-grained reality is. The theory is axiomatized in terms of the primitive of *being a necessity*, and we show how the central notions in the philosophy of modality can be recovered from it. Various questions are formulated and settled within the framework, including questions about the ordering of necessities under strength, the existence of broadest necessities satisfying various logical conditions, and questions about (...) their logical behaviour. We also wield the framework to probe the conditions under which a logicist account of necessities is possible, in which the theory is completely reducible to logic. (shrink)

Disagreement and debunking arguments threaten religious belief. In this paper, I draw attention to two types of propositions and show how they reveal new ways to respond to debunking arguments and disagreement. The first type of proposition is the epistemically self-promoting proposition, which, when justifiedly believed, gives one a reason to think that one reliably believes it. Such a proposition plays a key role in my argument that some religious believers can permissibly wield an epistemically circular argument in response to (...) certain debunking arguments. The second type of proposition is the epistemically others-demoting proposition, which, when justifiedly believed, gives one a reason to think that others are unreliable with respect to it. Such a proposition plays a key role in my argument that some religious believers can permissibly wield a question-begging argument to respond to certain types of disagreement. (shrink)

This volume covers a wide range of conceptual, epistemological and methodological issues in the philosophy of science raised by reflection upon medical science and practice.

Many manipulation arguments against compatibilism rely on the claim that manipulation is relevantly similar to determinism. But we argue that manipulation is nothing like determinism in one relevant respect. Determinism is a "universal" phenomenon: its scope includes every feature of the universe. But manipulation arguments feature cases where an agent is the only manipulated individual in her universe. Call manipulation whose scope includes at least one but not all agents "existential manipulation." Our responsibility practices are impacted in different ways by (...) universal and existential phenomena. And this is a relevant difference, especially on Strawsonian approaches to moral responsibility, which take facts about our responsibility practices to be deeply connected to the nature of responsibility itself. We argue that Strawsonian accounts of moral responsibility are immune to manipulation arguments, and no attempt to modify the scope of manipulation or determinism featured in these arguments will help incompatibilists secure their desired conclusion. (shrink)

We suggest that there is confusion between why consciousness developed and what additional functions, through continued evolution, it has co-opted. Consider episodic memory. If we believe that episodic memory evolved solely to accurately represent past events, it seems like a terrible system—prone to forgetting and false memories. However, if we believe that episodic memory developed to flexibly and creatively combine and rearrange memories of prior events in order to plan for the future, then it is quite a good system. We (...) argue that consciousness originally developed as part of the episodic memory system—quite likely the part needed to accomplish that flexible recombining of information. We posit further that consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-solving, abstract thinking, and language. We suggest that this theory is compatible with many phenomena, such as the slow speed and the after-the-fact order of consciousness, that cannot be explained well by other theories. We believe that our theory may have profound implications for understanding intentional action and consciousness in general. Moreover, we suggest that episodic memory and its associated memory systems of sensory, working, and semantic memory as a whole ought to be considered together as the conscious memory system in that they, together, give rise to the phenomenon of consciousness. Lastly, we suggest that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that makes consciousness possible, and that every cortical region contributes to this conscious memory system. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMiranda Fricker has characterized epistemic injustice as “a kind of injustice in which someone is wronged specifically in her capacity as a knower” (2007, Epistemic injustice: Power & the e...

Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composition never occurs. Some philosophers have thought that science gives us compelling evidence against nihilism. In this article I respond to this concern. An initial challenge for nihilism stems from the fact that composition is such a ubiquitous feature of scientific theories. In response I motivate a restricted form of scientific anti-realism with respect to those components of scientific theories which make reference to composition. A second scientifically based worry for nihilism is that certain (...) specific scientific phenomena might require ineliminable quantification over composite objects. I address these concerns, and argue that there seem to be nihilist-friendly construals of the scientific phenomena in question. (shrink)

Everyday lookism, by which I mean the widespread practice of commenting upon and judging the appearance of others, is often regarded as morally troubling. But when, and why, is it morally problemat...

A list of resources for virtue theories of argumentation. Last updated December 5th 2024.

Here is a question as intriguing as it is brief: what are we? The animalist’s answer is equal in brevity: we are animals. This stark formulation of the animalist slogan distances it from nearby claims—that we are essentially animals, for example, or that we have purely biological criteria of identity over time. Is the animalist slogan—unburdened by modal or criterial commitments—still interesting, though? Or has it lost its bite? In this article we address such questions by presenting a positive case (...) for the importance of animalism and applying that case to recent critiques. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the enkratic principle in its classic formulation may not be a requirement of rationality. The investigation of whether it is leads to some important methodological insights into the study of rationality. I also consider the possibility that we should consider rational requirements as a subset of a broader category of agential requirements.

I argue that assertoric content functions as a means for us to track the responsibilities undertaken by communicators, and that distinctively assertoric commitments are distinguished by being generated directly in virtue of the words the speaker uses. This raises two questions: (a) Why are speakers responsible for the content thus generated? (b) Why is it important for us to distinguish between commitments in terms of their manner of generation? I answer the first question by developing a novel responsibility based metasemantics. (...) I answer the second by reference to the conflicting pressures governing the resources we have available for appraising speech. (shrink)

Recognizing that all traits are the result of an interaction between genes and environment, I offer a set of criteria for nevertheless making sense of our practice of singling out certain traits as genetic ones, in effect making a distinction between causes and mere conditions. The central criterion is that a trait is genetic if it is genetic differences that make the differences in that trait variable in a given population. A second criterion requires that genetic traits be individuated in (...) a way that matches what some genetic factors cause specifically. Clarifying our causal and classificatory language here can help us to avoid confusions of both theoretical and practical significance. (shrink)

This paper critically examines a particular strategy for resolving the central ethical dilemma associated with randomized clinical trials — the “community equipoise” strategy . The dilemma is that RCTs appear to violate a physician's duty to choose that therapy which there is most reason to believe is in the patient's best interest, randomizing patients even once evidence begins to favor one treatment. The community equipoise strategy involves the suggestion that our judgment that neither treatment is to be preferred is to (...) be assessed according to a community rather than an individual standard. Thus, though a physician may personally believe that there is some reason to prefer one treatment, patients can legitimately be randomized if there remains disagreement in the community of medical professionals. Rationales in favor of this conception include the following: medical knowledge is best understood as residing in the community, the judgments of others count as evidence, and so should change one's own opinion, subjects would not be better off outside the trial, and the point of any trial is the resolution of dispute in the medical community. I critically examine these rationales and argue that they are insufficient. Amongst the problems are tensions between various of these underlying rationales, and important ambiguities in just what the CE criterion is to amount to. Finally, I argue that even if use of CE was justified, it would not justify carrying out RCTs anywhere near long enough to discharge our duty to gain reliable knowledge on which to base safe and effective medical practice. Hence, we need some different justification for carrying out RCTs. (shrink)