When people with PhDs in philosophy talk about God, it's called philosophy of religion. It has a somewhat strange aura about it among all the areas of philosophy. What kind of strange aura? Well, since it never fails to begin with a joke, here's something I found on a philosopher's webpage once (after some searching, I unfortunately don't remember where):
If you're at a cocktail party talking with friends and they ask what you do for a living and you say you're a college professor, their eyes will kinda glaze over and they'll lose interest.More seriously, I once had an encounter with the undergraduate adviser for philosophy here in Madison where she told me I should make a point to take as many of the upper-level metaphysics/epistemology-type courses as possible... with the exception of philosophy of religion. What gives here?
If you're at a cocktail party for college professors and they ask what department you're in and you say philosophy, their eyes will kinda glaze over and they'll lose interest.
If you're at a cocktail party for professional philosophers and they ask what your specialty is and you say philosophy of religion...
I've come to suspect there's a deep institutional problem with philosophy of religion: the atheists just don't care. Or, to be more precise, they care enough to pay attention for awhile but not enough to avoid get bored relatively fast.
I saw this, I think, in my 101 prof. We had a philosophy of religion unit as our first or second unit, with a standard slate of issues: cosmological argument, design argument, argument from evil. We got a little behind, and when we finally got around to Swinburne's response to the argument from evil, with time running low, the prof almost tried to cover it quickly, and then stopped himself and just passed over the Swinburne reading. My impression is that he was simply embarrassed by how bad Swinburne's response was. My experience in that course was one of the main things that prompted a recent comment to a friend that it seems that for many philosophers, philosophy of religion is something they think about as undergrads, and then they realize that God doesn't exist and move on to other things. (The prof, for those who care, is in philosophy of mind.)
Unlike no doubt the majority of atheist philosophers, I can see myself someday publishing a paper or two or even three on philosophy of religion. However, when it comes to where I'd actually like to make my career, philosophy of mind is so much more exciting. And of course, I find religion quite boring at times.
Strikingly, though, this limit of interest seems to be found even among people who've built up a reputation for publishing in philosophy of religion. J. L. Mackie, for example, seems to have been interested in and influential in ethics as much as anything. I've even come across a number of indicators that this is true of Antony Flew, the supposed "world's most notorious atheist" whose conversion to deism was so much touted. Mark Oppenheimer, in his NYT piece, indicated Flew spent most of the interview time talking politics. I've heard a similar report, albeit second hand, based on one Madison prof's interactions with Flew. There are even hints of this the book Roy Varghese co-wrote.
The lack of interest by atheist philosophers in philosophy of religion really distorts the discipline. It seems there are lots of philosophers in philosophy of mind or philosophy of science or whatnot who are content to snigger behind Swinburne's back and snigger behind Plantiga's back, and who just can't be bothered to write up their thoughts. Thus, what's published in philosophy of religion doesn't reflect the thoughts of the profession as a whole. If the published stuff did do that, theists would probably have an image as a hard-fighting minority, but the way publication is skewed, they're allowed to get the impression that they've earned a boundless supply of respect from their colleagues, only to occasionally run up against a puzzling disdain for the specialty they cherish so much.
30 comments:
Sorry, but I've missed your point. Humanist/atheist philosophers write extensively about religion. Go to www.The-Brights.Net for an introduction, or to any humanist association in the US or Canada.
T.L.Hill, PhD
I'm sorry, *I'm* missing *your* point. I'm perfectly well aware that plenty of atheists have written about religion. But the point is not writing about religion, but writing professional philosophical works on religion. And then, the point is not writing professional philosophical works on religion but the number of people who do it and then the extent commitment of those who do do it to doing it.
Hi Chris,
This article by Quentin Smith deals directly with the issue you raise in the post. A real eye opener.
http://www.qsmithwmu.com/metaphilosophy_of_naturalism.htm
Adam
Interesting article, though I'm skeptical of Smith's suggestion that most atheist philosophers are unjustified in their views and am confident he's wrong to suggest atheist non-philosophers of religion could hold their own against theist philosophers of religion. I know some atheist philosophers have read Plantinga, Swinburne, et al and come to the considered opinion that their stuff is rubbish.
Arguably, Smith's paper is a symptom of the problem described in the original post. Atheist philosophers of religion, I get the impression, tend to be more respectful of the work defending theism. They publish mild criticisms. People who note apparently devastating criticisms don't see why they should bother publishing. (Though this is not universally the case; I know of a recent formal reply to Plantinga that was rather disdainful:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_draper/serious.html
*re-reading the above, I realize I should have said "some atheist philosophers who don't publish in philosophy of religion" if the point is to have any significance.
Perceptive post; I await your papers on God with interest. As far as I can see, religion is no more boring than politics or science (e.g. exciting headlines, boring jobs etc.), and no less true (or likely to be useful, at the end of the day) than Lewis's Possible Worlds, for example; but is perhaps more embarrasing (?)
It seems there are lots of philosophers in philosophy of mind or philosophy of science or whatnot who are content to snigger behind Swinburne's back and snigger behind Plantiga's back, and who just can't be bothered to write up their thoughts.
I don't see it. Plantinga is by any measure an outstanding metaphysician and epistemologist. I don't know anyone in the profession who seriously denies that. van Inwagen is very likely the most highly regarded metaphysican working. Both are theists, as I'm sure you know. Are you saying that the sniggering philosophers of mind or science are better philosophers than either of these? That seems mistaken. Similarly for Putnam, I guess, who is a practicing Conservative Jew? My guess is that this is mistaken, too. Anyway, Putnam and Plantinga discuss theism in a fairly well-known radio interview here, http://radioapologia.com/audio_ra.php.
Re: mike--
Okay, naming names: the intro prof who was embarrassed by Swinbrune was Larry Shapiro. For Plantinga, I had in mind comments by Massimo Pigliucci the last time he gave a lecture on campus. Pigliucci cited and endorsed some remarks he got from Philip Kitcher. Important to note here that all three were talking about their targets' work in philosophy of religion, I don't know for sure what they say if asked about Swinburne and Plantinga's work on other subjects. As for whether they're better philosophers than, say, Plantinga, that wasn't really my initial point, but... let's put it this way: I don't know that they've ever produced any work as embarrassingly bad as some of Plantinga's comments on evolution. Leave it there.
To my knowledge, Plantinga hasn't written anything about evolution per se. What he's written on is that given only evolution, materialism, and atheism with no higher power guiding things along or setting things up with a goal in mind, there's no reason to expect that our faculties should be reliable in giving us information about the world. This is something people who have no theistic inclinations have worried about. Whether he's right is independent of whether evolution is true. It's not an argument against evolution. It's an argument for theism. His conclusion is consistent with accepting theism and evolution.
He's also written that fine-tuning arguments are pretty good, which means he accepts an intelligent design argument, but of course this also has nothing to do with evolution. Design arguments of almost every sort are fully compatible with evolution.
Now there is a cottage industry among internet atheists for taking any statement vaguely friendly toward theistic design arguments as if it endorses full-blown six-day creationism. Consider the treatment of Michael Behe, who accepts a full evolutionary account of human origins, by the anti-ID crowd. Behe does accept that you can use scientific conclusions as the basis of a design argument, and that might deserve some criticism if the science is bad or if the philosophical argument based on the scientific conclusion is otherwise unsound. But it doesn't amount to a criticism of evolution, as people often pretend. Behe's own views show that he isn't criticizing evolution.
I hope that's not what you're doing with Plantinga, but I'm not making any headway in figuring out what you're getting at otherwise. His only comments that I know of are critical of what I think are some pretty downright awful arguments by those who are misportraying design arguments as something other than what they are.
You seem to be unaware of Plantinga's endorsements of Old Earth Creationism. But that's not what I initially had in mind; I was indeed thinking about his claims regarding "evolutionary naturalism," which he seems to use to mean "evolution simpliciter." There, he makes sweeping claims about what kind of creatures (or what kind of cognitive machinery of creatures) evolution is likely to produce, without showing the slightest care for the actual science on the matter. Pause here, put a little effort into trying to understand how bad that looks to philosophers of science who've actually put in the time to understand the scientific issues they're writing about, or worse, get multiple PhDs in biology, as Pigliucci has.
"I was indeed thinking about his claims regarding "evolutionary naturalism," which he seems to use to mean "evolution simpliciter.""
Statements like that suggest that you haven't actually read Plantinga on this topic. Even his critics (e.g., Fitelson and Sober) recognize the distinction he makes between evolutionary naturalism and evolution simpliciter. You also must not be aware of Plantinga's role in getting the NABT's statement on evolution changed from a decidedly "naturalistic" view of evolution to a broader view of evolution. Why would he do that if he saw no difference?
I would also appreciate it if you could tell us where Plantinga identifies himself as accepting "Old Earth Creationism." (I don't doubt it, but depending on what he actually said, he could mean nothing more than that he believes that the earth is as old as current science tells us and that he believes that the universe is created - as opposed to accepting something like what, for example, Hugh Ross accepts.)
I'm unaware that Plantinga has taken any stance at all on evolution. He clearly is a creationist in the sense of believing that God created, but I've never seen anything indicating more than that there is a creator and that naturalism is false. He has given arguments against six-day creationism, but that doesn't amount to endorsing any particular picture of how creation did take place. I know he thinks parents have a right for their kids not to be taught evolution, but that also says nothing about his own views. I know a very committed atheist who thinks the same thing.
By naturalistic evolution, Plantinga means unguided, non-teleological evolution. You can easily accept the standard evolutionary picture of human development and deny what his argument denies. He just thinks you can't do it easily without theism.
As for the issue of ignoring science, I have a hard time believing science can tell us a lot about what kind of cognitive machinery evolution is likely to produce. Plantinga's claim is that unguided processes are not likely to produce certain results. Scientific study may be capable of explaining a mechanism by which those results could have happened. But he never denies that naturalistic processes could produce such results, just that it would be really unlikely. Is the science you're talking about really dealing with the probability issue, or is it simply about the possibility issue that he grants?
What about the more metaphysical areas of phil. of religion? Even if they're ignored for the most part, it's not like they're as embarrassingly bad as some of the more epistemological areas.
Jeremy: You have a hard time believing that science can tell us what the things it studies are likely to do? Again: just listen to yourself.
Hallq, if you seriously think assigning probabilities to things like this is the business of science, then you're going to be left without much ammunition against the claim that intelligent design arguments are science. After all, those arguments are simply inferences to the best explanation based on scientific observations as premises and inferred probabilities about what those factual states are likely to produce. If that's science, then ID is science. (It doesn't mean it's good science, because that depends entirely on whether the arguments are good ones. But by your account of science, intelligent design does in fact come out as science.)
I agree that a lot of good metaphysics has been done under philosophy of religion. A lot of bad metaphysics has also been done under philosophy of religion. I think the foreknowledge debate, for example, illustrates some of the best examples of each. There's been lots of good metaphysical discussion of religious issues. People like Peter van Inwagen and John Hawthorne are hard to describe as substandard, and I don't think their work in philosophy of religion is any less good than anything else they've done.
As for epistemology, I'm not sure why reliabilism is supposed to be all that laughable, and it's not as if it's only religious philosophers defending it. It's becoming fairly widespread now. Since the majority response to skeptical objections to faith is pretty much reliabilism, it seems strange to isolate epistemology of religion as an area that typifies bad arguments. It basically makes use of a view that's becoming the standard view in epistemology.
Have you actually taken a look at the kinds of discussions that occur on Prosblogion, Hallq? I suggest you take a look at the high-level conversations there, with some contributors who are very careful in recognizing difficulties with their arguments and often willing to acknowledge the limits of philosophical arguments for faith-positions and the difficulties of objections against them. I think this is true even of the people who want to say the more outlandish things.
I don't see the point of your argument. My last post expressed the view that "science can tell us what the things it studies are likely to do." This is a statement about what science can do. About a feature of science, not about something that automatically qualifies a thing for being a science. It provides no conceivable basis for classifying Intelligent Design or anything else as science. I'm also amazed that you would take as just obvious that Intelligent Design isn't even bad science, which appears to be a premise of your argument against my position (or rather, your lazy misreading of it). But then, I suspect you weren't really trying to make a serious argument, but were going for a lame appeal to my biases (or rather, your lazy assumptions about my biases--for the record, I don't find it obvious where we draw the line between really, truly, lousy science and things that try to be science but aren't).
You're not doing much to endear me to philosophy of religion types.
Don't forget that philosophy of religion encompasses more than just Christian theism. There are philosophers interested in non-Western religions and topics in metaphysics, mind, epistemology, etc.
This is my area of interest (I'm a grad student) so I may have a skewed view of its popularity, but I think about Buddhist studies in philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics and language. Jay Garfield, Mark Siderits, Dan Arnold, to name a few folks.
Of course, this doesn't go to your point about professional philosophers who disbelieve in god and the supposed respect theistic philosophers get, which you claim is a distortion. But I just thought I'd add the note, anyway.
Hallq, I think you're correct that 'devastating criticism' just doesn't get published. People remain politely (or maybe not so politely) indifferent to work which seems to be plain bad or inconsequential: Swinbourne's 'proof' that the probability of the resurrection is 97% made it into the popular press but few philosophers bothered either to refute or embrace it. Regarding evolution, Plantinga may think that if he wins the lottery God arranged it so that he wins, or maybe a Cartesian demon arranged it so that if Plantinga wins by chance he takes the lottery to be rigged. But if his project is to show how Christian metaphysics entails that humans attain truth, philosophers of science may well remain unimpressed. Perhaps those who get to do philosophy of religion are Christian believers who'd be ill at ease even in theology departments, with all the textual criticism and anti-realist interpretations.
Jeremy, you say that there are people who are 'careful in recognizing difficulties with their arguments and often willing to acknowledge the limits of philosophical arguments for faith-positions and the difficulties of objections against them'. Do you know of any who've abandoned faith-positions as a result? How much of Christian faith survives revision in view of those objections and limitations? Sure, when the going gets tough people may choose to go down the Kierkegaard route but in this case why not explicitly acknowledge that this is the route they're going down?
think you're correct that 'devastating criticism' just doesn't get published. People remain politely (or maybe not so politely) indifferent to work which seems to be plain bad or inconsequential
This indifference claim is patently false. So many major contemporary philosophers have made important contributions to the philosophy of religion (both for and against), I wouldn't have time to list them. I'm sure I'll be accused of actually naming people who have done important work in the area, but some that come to mind include John Earman, (in particular, his criticism of Hume's famous argument against miracles), Robert Fogelin (defending Hume on miracles), and Elliot Sober, J.L. Mackie, Jerry Fodor, David Lewis, Peter Forrest, Kai Nielson, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ernie Sosa, Keith DeRose, James van Cleve, Graham Oppy, Roy Sorenson, John Hawthorne, Chris Menzel, Derk Pereboom, Ted Sider, Dean Zimmerman and Trenton Merricks, have all made important (positive and negative) contributions to philosophy of religion. And, obviously, there are many more than that. I have no idea where this indifference claim comes from, but it is just indefensible.
Sweet reason... where on Earth is your reading comprehension, Mike? EO said "People remain politely (or maybe not so politely) indifferent to work which seems to be plain bad or inconsequential," not that nothing is being done in philosophy of religion.
Frankly, the point about Swinburne on the Resurrection is a really good one, which I wish I had thought of. I would personally find it difficult to write a review of Swinburne more than three or four sentences long; I'd be inclined to do something like this:
"In this book, Swinburne argues that given everything we know, it is likely that Jesus actually rose from the dead. The key to his case is his claim that if God existed, it is likely that he would become incarnate as Christian theology claims, and that if he became incarnate, we would expect him to have a life very much like that ascribed to Jesus. Swinburne says little to support these intuitions, and it is doubtful that anyone not raised in a Christian environment would share them.
. . . EO said "People remain politely (or maybe not so politely) indifferent to work which seems to be plain bad or inconsequential," not that nothing is being done in philosophy of religion.
Geeze, take another look. The vagueness of 'work' in this context admits of a broader or narrower resolution. I hope his assertion is not that this or that work in philosophy of religion is bad or inconsequential. Who the hell would doubt that? The same is true in every area of philosophy. So, if you're right on this reading, he's asserting something trivial. I took him to be making a non-trivial claim that most, or far too much, work in philosophy of religion is bad or inconsequential, since there is no other way to make sense of his absurd closing commment.
Perhaps those who get to do philosophy of religion are Christian believers who'd be ill at ease even in theology departments, with all the textual criticism and anti-realist interpretations
That incredibly poorly informed assertion is what led me to list some of the people who are actually doing philosophy of religion, all of whom are by any standard first rate philosophers, and all of whose contributions to the area have been important.
No, you look again. I'm going to go as slow as I can here: The claim is not about the work being done. It's about how philosophers respond to work that seems a certain way to them. Do I have to parse it fragment by fragment? Even if the amount of bad, inconsequential work were small, claims about how people respond to it would be non-trivial.
You seem blindingly unable to find the issue. And snarky remarks really don't cover for ignorance. As I have pointed out, it is an entirely trivial point that there are errors in some papers in philosophy of religion. Who the hell would actually take the time to make such a point? But now you blurt this out,
Even if the amount of bad, inconsequential work were small, claims about how people respond to it would be non-trivial.
What a waste of time. Who cares how anyone responds to a bad paper? That some people don't respond to, or ignore, bad papers meets your standards of being non-trivial? It's not even moderately interesting. But this has already wasted too much of my time.
You seem really good at finding issues that aren't there. Do you even understand that the original purpose of this post was to analyze the dynamics of the profession, and took no position whatsoever on the quality of work being done by Plantinga and Swinburne? Were you paying attention when I said "As for whether they're [Shapiro, Pigliucci, and Kitcher] better philosophers than, say, Plantinga, that wasn't really my initial point" and then kept my criticism of Plantinga as minimalistic as possible? You seem intent on finding quite imaginary slights.
chMike, did you mean to disprove that devastating criticism doesn't get published or did you take my trivial, absurd and uninformed comments not to be bad enough to merit indifference? (Just joking, and thanks for the response though you did get one thing wrong: I'm not a 'he', but no offence taken; you couldn't tell and made me in your image!) I thought the claim that the probability of the resurrection is 97% was bold enough to provoke the controversy it failed to stir, so I guessed people might have thought it was 'plain bad'. (Is the reference to criticisms of Hume's 'On Miracles' meant to dispute this assessment? I'm not sure.) I also suggested that Plantinga's model may have no appeal for philosophers of science - and that includes people as religiously committed as presumably he is, such as Duhem or van Fraassen - one reason being that it accounts for a cognitive success they're not claiming. (Again I'm not sure if you'd dispute this assessment or not.) The reason I brought theology is that the positions of Plantinga and Swinburne (both presumed paragons in the field) seem to involve question-begging circularity, which might be less of a problem in a theological context if people there weren't 'going continental', which I had a hunch they were and if the hunch is absurd so be it. But it does seem that there's a higher concentration of 'hard-headed realists' within philosophy of religion, optimistically pursuing ambitious projects and making grand claims, and keeping some atheist philosophers of religion in business in the process. Perhaps there's no more osmosis with philosophy of science and other fields because work there is comparatively modest, but then 'what's published in philosophy of religion doesn't reflect the thoughts of the profession as a whole'.
Hullq, thanks for all the brilliant work you did while I was away! This was a perceptive, thought provoking post (under 'sociology of philosophy') and I wanted to say so.
EO:
Thanks for the comment. I see one (possible) problem with your comments, though: in the U.S., it's a lot easier to find conservative seminaries, were people are "realists" in the sense of having relatively straightforward accounts of concepts like God, though they may "go continental" in the sense of being less interested in rigorous argument and rigorous argument than the people who go into philosophy of religion.
I don't know how different this really is than Europe. I guess I would assume the Catholic church does okay job of enforcing a degree of orthodoxy in its schools, but they still have issues with their people occasionally falling off the left end of the spectrum.
Hallq, you and Mike agree over something! I've already admitted it was a hunch and I accept what you're saying. Yet faith-oriented epistemologies seem to be hybrid, putting the cart (metaphysics!) before the horse and proving both too much and too little: That there're such compelling arguments/evidence so most humans alive must be irrational not to be Christians, or that, for rationality evidence and argument are optional extras. People at large might care to listen if there was some consistency proof of Christian metaphysics, but they'd still be missing an account for the evolution of human knowledge.
I remember coming across the cocktail party joke in Dennett's "Breaking the Spell."
As for Platinga, I'm not terribly familiar with him but some theist once told me to check out his "proof" of the existence of a "maximally great being." I did so and was underwhelmed. It was just Anselm's argument reheated and obfuscated with pseudo-mathematics.
Alister McGrath quotes Swinburne approvingly several times in "The Dawkins Delusion?" but again I am unimpressed. I blogged about this argument here.
To my lay eyes, the really interesting work being done in the philosophy of religion is by people like Hector Avalos with his theory of religion as artificial scarcity.
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