Do babies come into this world with a natural tendency to tell right from wrong, or is their stance entirely informed by social conditioning? Or is it both?

I’ve blogged in the past on ethical intuitionism, and I had some favourable things to say about it. Properly functioning people under the right sorts of conditions, I maintain, have a (fallible) tendency to form true moral beliefs. I also blogged recently about the fact that children, in the course of healthy, normal development without extraordinary intervention, naturally form belief in God.

What about healthy babies and moral beliefs? Do they naturally form true moral beliefs, or is it all a matter of social conditioning and etiquette? Well, I’ve already answered that question by supporting ethical intuitionism. If that’s a plausible view on true moral belief formation in general, then it will be true of everyone as they develop into a competent knower. But is there any scientific evidence that very young children and babies actually do naturally form (what many of us would take to be) true moral beliefs?
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A friend today brought my attention to his question, put to William Lane Craig, on whether or not the existence of uncreated abstract objects is compatible with biblical teaching. The question concerns a disagreement that Bill Craig has with Peter Van Inwagen of Notre Dame University. It might be helpful, therefore, if I outline the background to the disagreement.

Peter Van Inwagen believes in platonic or abstract objects. These are non-physical, eternal things that do not need to be created but just exist. Examples would include the number 1, properties, and even possible worlds. These objects exist necessarily, says Van Inwagen. They exist in all possible worlds. This means, for example, “that the number 510 would exist no matter what.”¹

Now we should be careful in how we characterise this notion of “existence.” Van Inwagen adds:

If the notion of an abstract object makes sense at all, it seems evident that if everything were an abstract object, if the only objects were abstract objects, there is an obvious and perfectly good sense in which there would be nothing at all, for there would be no physical things, no stuffs, no events, no space, no time, no Cartesian egos, no God. When people want to know why there is anything at all, they want to know why that bleak state of affairs does not obtain.²

Abstract objects, according to Van Inwagen, are not “out there” in the world of things in creation. If they were the only things that existed, then in the same sense that people ask why there is something rather than nothing, nothing would really exist. Speaking this way, then, “all things” that exist can be thought of in an everyday sense not to include abstract objects. This clarification is necessary in order to avoid misunderstandings of Van Inwagen’s view.

Bill Craig doesn’t think this is an acceptable position for a Christian to hold. He believes that the existence of uncreated abstract objects is at irreconcilable odds with both the Nicene Creed and – more importantly for most Christians – with the teaching of the Bible. The opening words of the Nicene Creed affirm that God is the creator of all things, both “seen and unseen.” What is more, the author of the Gospel of John, in chapter 1 verse 3, says that through the logos (seen as a reference Christ) God “all things were made.” Van Inwagen then, holds to a view that is incompatible with historic and biblical Christianity, says Craig.
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In the “nuts and bolts” series, I explain and discuss some of the fundamental ideas in philosophy (and theology sometimes) that are taken for granted within the discipline, but which might not be very well known to ordinary human beings. This time the subject is nominalism.

Do tables exist? Do all red apples (assuming that apples exist) have something called “redness” in common? These might strike most people as pretty weird questions, but questions like these are at the heart of the distinction between realism and nominalism. They’re both ways of addressing the problem of universals. We classify things all the time; as circular, as yellow, as an elephant, as a mountain, as a snail, as wooden, as evil, and so on. Nominalism and realism are alternative ways of thinking about what we’re actually doing when we classify things this way. I’m going to be zooming in on nominalism here, but I’ll be simplifying heavily in the spirit of only attempting to provide the nuts and bolts, without going into a whole lot of depth.
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The following scenario represents Newcomb’s paradox (non-relevant details may have been changed): I want you to imagine that there exists a person called The Predictor. He predicts human decisions, and has always gotten it right. Due to his legendary status, some say he’s a man, others a machine, others an angel. One thing everyone is sure of, however, is that if the predictor predicts that a person will make a particular decision, then you would be smart to bet the house on that decision being made, such is his amazing strike rate.

Now imagine that one day as you’re walking along the street, a black van pulls up alongside you, a bag is pulled over your head, and you’re bundled inside. The van speeds away as you lose consciousness. When you wake up, you’re in a brightly lit room, sitting in a chair, unrestrained, at a table – a bit like one you’d expect to see on the pavement outside a coffee shop. On the table in front of you are two black cube shaped boxes, each about one litre in volume. You can’t see inside them because they have closed lids. They are each labelled with a large white letter. One is A, the other is B. Sitting across the small table from you is a man who you’ve never seen before. “Hello,” says the grey haired man in an old, wise sounding voice. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m the predictor. And as for these boxes you see here, you can keep either both of them, or, if you prefer, just box B. The reality is, of course, that I already know which option you’ll pick. I predicted it, you see, and I’ve never been wrong before. Remember, I’m the predictor!”

“You’ve never been wrong before? Wow… can you see the future?” You ask. “No, not as such,” he replies. “What I offer are predictions about things that I haven’t seen. They are forecasts. My prediction about which box or boxes you will choose isn’t based on me having been told by God, or through having a magic window on the future. I’m just a very, very, very good predictor.”

You’re convinced, but still a bit stunned by the whole experience. You ask “What’s in the boxes?” He replies, “Why, money of course. I chose how much money to put into them based on my prediction about which option you would choose. Box A contains one hundred dollars, you can be quite certain of that. As for box B, listen very closely: If I predicted that you would choose boxes A and B, then I didn’t put anything in box B. It’s empty. If, however, I predicted that you would choose only box B, then it contains one million dollars.

A million dollars sure sounds nice. So, which option should you choose – Box B, or both boxes. Why? I’ll wait for a few people to answer before I say any more.

This episode is about Intelligent Design – sort of. I don’t argue here for intelligent design. What I’m doing is looking at a couple of philosophical objections to ID which, I argue, are just contrived for no other purpose than to exclude intelligent design from “science.”

Episode 017: Intelligent Design [ 28:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve put up a draft version of my latest article: “Hasker at the Bridge of Death.”

Professor Hasker has been kind enough to look over the paper for me, but in the meantime I welcome feedback and criticism from one and all.

Here’s a basic rundown of the paper: William Hasker thinks that physicalism has a major problem accounting for an acceptable doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. He thinks that emergentism has no such problem, since in emergentism the soul can survive the death of the body and then later be (re)incarnated in a new body. I have little to say about the former claim (in this paper, at least), but I raise doubts over the latter claim.

I say that a mind that is emergent upon a body surviving the death of that body does not appear to be any more coherent than Hasker thinks the idea of a resurrected physical person is. Moreover, the analogies he draws on to persuade the reader that it might not be so absurd after all to think of a mind as self sustaining after the death of the body (examples of black holes and magnetic fields) involve important mistakes on Hasker’s part regarding the facts involved in each analogy.

I argue that when not drawing on problematic analogies, Hasker switches between two different dualisms: emergentism prior to the death of the body, and traditional dualism after the death of the body. He turns to the possibility that God steps in, filling the role once filled by the body, enabling the mind to live on (presumably in heaven) with the body that it used to be emergent upon. Emergentism is thus denied by his claims. Were he to consistently apply all the predicates of the emergent mind to the mind that allegedly survives the death of the body, all sorts of problems would arise, not the least of which being that he would have to conceive of the mind traveling through space to get to a place in space until the resurrection, and secondly it is far from clear that we can make sense of a mind that is emergent on one thing becoming emergent on another, even if that thing is God.

Emergentism might be true. But when an emergentist with views on “soul survival” like Hasker’s claims that physicalists have a logical mess on their hands, sayings about pots, kettles, stones and glass houses come to mind.

According to the Mirriam-Webster Online dictionary, this is what it means to be pathological:

pathological

Main Entry:
path·o·log·i·cal

Pronunciation:
\?pa-th?-?lä-ji-k?l\
Variant(s):
also path·o·log·ic Listen to the pronunciation of pathologic \-jik\
Function:
adjective

1: of or relating to pathology
2: altered or caused by disease; also : indicative of disease
3: being such to a degree that is extreme, excessive, or markedly abnormal <a pathological liar> <pathological fear>

Now, it’s old news that infidels.org is not a place to find reliable information on philosophy of religion. But every once in a while I accidentally stumble across one of their pages in a web search, and I receive a reminder so concentrated that it makes my eyes bleed.

They have a page here on the work of Alvin Plantinga. Under the first heading, in their summary of his “Naturalism vs Evolution: A Religion/Science Conflict?” they begin with an overall claim: “In this chapter, Alvin Plantinga argues that naturalism entails that our beliefs cannot affect our behavior, but natural selection only selects for beneficial behaviors.”

This in spite of the fact that they reproduce that same chapter at their website, in which Plantinga clearly says that beliefs do affect our behaviour – even in naturalism. Anyone at all who is familiar with the argument in that chapter – an argument Plantinga is famous for (the “Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism”) will recall this. To deny this is like saying “in Locke’s famous work on human understanding, he argues that innate ideas exist….” Read the actual essay by Plantinga that the Infidels are summarising here (as provided on their site), it’s a good piece.

Plantinga’s argument is that beliefs are causal for behaviour, but that given naturalism and evolution, this causal relationship undermines the reliability of those beliefs. There, I summarised it in one sentence!

What’s tragic here is that the appearance of a summary gives the impression that someone from Infidels has actually read the essay, and still thinks that this is what Plantinga said!

Whether intentional or not, it fits the dictionary definition (definition #3) of pathological misrepresentation.

It’s fairly self explanatory – check it out here. Which belief system most closely matches you?

Here are my results, number 1 = the strongest correlation.

1. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (100%)
2. Eastern Orthodox (93%)
3. Roman Catholic (93%)
4. Seventh Day Adventist (85%)
5. Orthodox Quaker (79%)
6. Hinduism (75%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (70%)
8. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (59%)
9. Jehovah’s Witness (59%)
10. Orthodox Judaism (52%)
11. Jainism (48%)
12. Bahá’í Faith (46%)
13. Islam (43%)
14. Sikhism (42%)
15. Mahayana Buddhism (41%)
16. Liberal Quakers (41%)
17. Theravada Buddhism (40%)
18. Unitarian Universalism (38%)
19. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (34%)
20. Neo-Pagan (32%)
21. Scientology (29%)
22. Reform Judaism (26%)
23. New Thought (24%)
24. New Age (23%)
25. Nontheist (18%)
26. Secular Humanism (17%)
27. Taoism (15%)

I’m sure this has been around for a while, but I’ve only just discovered David Chalmers’ philosophical humour site here.

It has some gems, two of my favourite being:

From the Philosophical Lexicon: alvinize, v. To stimulate protracted discussion by making a bizarre claim. “His contention that natural evil is due to Satanic agency alvinized his listeners.”

If you’re a Plantinga reader, you get it. If not, too bad.)

And secondly, the page on Nietzsche’s guide to tech support here is fantastic. The advice, “What you’ve done in your function, fool, is the coding equivalent of failing to empty your colostomy bag” seems to flow rather naturally from the late nihilist.

Every now and then I tip my hat in the direction of Cornelius Van Til – But he was wrong in a few ways, and I’d hate for anyone to think that I’m one of those dyed-in-the-wool Van Til fans who think he could do no wrong. He did much wrong (and much good), philosophically speaking. So here’s one way in which he was wrong: Van Til’s position committed to epistemic internalism, which is an indefensible view of epistemology.
Anyone familiar with Van Til’s apologetic, whether expressed by Van Til or his followers, like Greg L. Bahnsen, will recognise the Van Tillian quality of the argument:

1. Laws of logic, science and morality require the existence of God.
2. So called Atheists employ laws of logic, science and morality.
3. Therefore so called atheists show that they really do know that God exists.

Just now I’m not denying either premise, and I’m not denying the conclusion either. But the above argument can only appear valid if one is an epistemic internalist.
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