Why Philosophy?
Myron A. Penner
Overview
I. How + What = Why
II. Scholarship: Research Areas
III. Scholarship: Teaching
I.
HOW + WHAT = WHY
How I came to study philosophy.
• New convert and the church AGM
• Bible College
• Regent College
Richard Swinburne
Plantinga and Wolterstorff
What philosophy is…
• Subject to interlopers
• Contested (sort of)
Philosophy
Philosophy’s Ancient Greek Roots:
• 6th Century BC
• Pre-Socratic assessment of religious
explanations
“Can’t we do better than that?”
Philosophy
First philosophers through reason, and reasoned
reflection on experience:
• Posit explanations
• Scrutinize claims
• Examine assumptions
Philosophy
Using reason and reasoned reflection on
experience to explain phenomena, solve
puzzles/problems, and scrutinize assumptions in
core areas of:
• Metaphysics
• Epistemology
• Logic
• Value Theory
Philosophy of
• Science, Biology, Physics, Psychology,
Mathematics, Law, Education, History, Mind,
Religion, Politics, Sex, Aesthetics, Ethics, Race,
Etc....
*Special sub-disciplines like these address core
areas in specific domain.
Philosophy and Theology
Philosophy
• ‘birthed’ out of rejection of ‘religious’
explanations
• Historical love/hate (and shades in between)
– How religious believers/theologians view
philosophy
– How philosophers view religious belief
II. SCHOLARSHIP: RESEARCH
Fallibility of Knowledge
Epistemologists tend to:
• Reject skepticism
• Embrace fallibilism.
Puzzle:
• Knowledge implies success
• Fallibility implies failure
• Is fallible knowledge really possible? How?
Solution Requires:
• Explaining the sense of “could” according to which one’s actual
knowledge could fail.
• Theological applications
Skeptical Theism
Philosophical Consensus:
• No logical problem of evil.
• Most arguments from evil are probabilistic focusing on quantity and
quality of seemingly pointless evils/sufferings
Skeptical Theism:
• Skeptical about human cognitive capacity to detect God’s reasons
• Inability to detect God’s reasons is no basis for denying them.
Defending Skeptical Theism
• From theists (who fear it entails deep, vicious skepticism)
• From atheists (who think it’s an inadequate response to problem)
Best World Dilemma
Is the actual world the best logically possible world?
If yes:
• then the very plausible intuition that things could both be
(a) different than they are, and (b) better than they are,
turns out to be false.
If no,
• then God has given being to a world when there are better
worlds that could have been brought into being instead—
and that seems to make God morally sub-standard.
Cognitive Science of Religion
CSR and Ev. Psych:
• powerful narrative according to which religious belief is the
byproduct of cognitive tools that evolved for purposes other than
the formation of religious beliefs.
The Alleged Moral:
• We have an empirically supported naturalistic causal count of
religious belief
• we’ve explained religious belief away—that is, we’ve undermined
the basis for thinking that religious beliefs are possibly true.
I argue that the current models of religious belief in cognitive science
provide no support for the conclusion that belief in God is irrational or
implausible.
Templeton Fellowship: Theism and Value
“Throughout the history of philosophy, many
arguments about the existence of God have been
proposed. Some have defended theism, others
atheism, and still others agnosticism. But while
philosophers have been busy trying to determine
whether or not God exists, they have often
neglected to ask: “What difference would – or
does – God’s existence make to the overall value of
the world?” ….This research project
will systematically investigate various answers that
might be given to this profoundly important
question.”
III. SCHOLARSHIP: TEACHING
PHIL 105: Introduction to Philosophy
• Basic argument
structures good and
bad.
• Is it rational to believe
in God?
• What, if anything, can
we know?
• Do we have a nonphysical soul?
PHIL 383: Reason and Belief in God
• Several classic and
contemporary theistic
arguments.
• Intellectually viable
religious belief: should
we care?
• Naturalistic cognitive
explanations: prospects
and problems.
PHIL 384: Suffering and Belief in God
• Logical and probabilistic
arguments from evil.
• Hell and eternal
suffering.
• Divine providence.
• Original sin.