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 KnowledgeEpistemologists 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 ReligionCSR 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 non-physical 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.