Kenny Pearce
@KennethLPearce
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I read old books and am confused about God. Philosophy Prof, @JMU_Phil_Rel (formerly @TCDPhilosophy ). New book: Is There a God?,
Harrisonburg, VA
Joined February 2021
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My latest paper, "Anthony Collins's Non-Vindication of the Divine Attributes" is now available from Journal of Theological Studies:
Summary below.
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Hume is a very entertaining philosopher & this is not accidental. He sees philosophy as a kind of recreational activity where you tie yourself up in knots, then afterward go to the pub & forget about it—start believing in material objects, induction, causation, etc. again. /1
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I really hate bad arguments for conclusions I endorse.
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Is this the most metaphysics ever to appear on one page of a children's book?
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Rowe's 'Can God Be Free?', summarized in flow chart form. (For my public lecture in the Big Questions in Philosophy series tomorrow.)
This is my favorite argument for atheism, because any attempt to respond to it leads to so much interesting philosophy!
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Views analytic philosophers take seriously that are MUCH less plausible than Berkeleian idealism:
Presentism
Mereological nihilism
Mereological universalism
Eliminative materialism
Mathematical fictionalism
Concrete modal realism
Moral error theory
'Humeanism' about causation
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This is your periodic reminder that most 17th/18th century European intellectuals believed in aliens. 👽👽👽
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Hot take: if you think genocide is good when commanded by the right person (or Person, if you prefer), you don’t believe in ‘objective morality’ in any worthwhile sense.
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This morning a talk on Spinoza was interrupted by someone saying, “I didn’t understand that.”
‘Someone’ turned out to be a voice assistant on a smartphone.
Should we be glad the AIs have yet to comprehend Spinoza?
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Elisabeth of Bohemia totally invented that move where you say "I think this is just a clarification question, I probably misunderstood, but..." followed by a completely devastating objection.
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The 'linguistic turn' is a myth. Philosophers have always been interested in language.
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According to theism, the ultimate explanation of the universe is a being who *cares about us*. According to naturalism, reality ultimately doesn't care whether we live or die, experience pleasure or pain, etc. Suffering is puzzling on only 1 of these views.
The amount of suffering in the world is puzzling on Theism but it's equally puzzling, if not more-so, on Naturalism. The more I think about this problem, the less I see it as a unique problem for theists to try and explain--it's a problem for everyone.
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I do find it puzzling that even professional philosophers who are theists find it difficult to say, “yes, the actual evils we observe are powerful evidence against the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God, but on balance it’s still rational to believe.”
Theists *really* do not like how powerful the argument from evil is.
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As a Christian, I firmly believe that God is good.
If that doesn’t mean that God is opposed to genocide, always & everywhere, I’ve lost all sense of what we mean by ‘good’.
I think when theists say ‘God is good’ we should mean something by it.
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As I’ve said before, Elisabeth invented that thing where you lead with “I think this is just a clarification question, this really isn’t my area, I probably misunderstood something” & then proceed to demolish the speaker’s philosophical project without mercy. It’s beautiful.
The correspondence between Elisabeth and Descartes goes so hard because she'll be like, "uwu I'm such a doofus, here's a nuclear objection to your work", and then he'll be like, "Madam, first of all, [ENTIRE PARAGRAPH ABOUT HOW HOT SHE IS]"
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I did undergrad in computer science & philosophy & worked as a software engineer before going for a PhD in philosophy & becoming a professor. I guess today’s my day on this site. AMA.
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I'll be teaching philosophy & scifi in the fall. The theme is personhood. For each unit there'll be an assignment asking students to analyze a philosophical issue as it arises in a work of SF. I'm aiming to develop a diverse list of additional SF recommendations.
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Books I frequently recommend to people:
1 Korsgaard, Sources of Normativity
2 Rowe, Can God be Free?
3 Lebens, Principles of Judaism
4 Athanasius, On the Incarnation
5 Leibniz, Theodicy
6 Stump, Wandering in Darkness
7 Sturgeon, More Than Human
8 Le Guin, Four Ways to Forgiveness
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Some people in Jesus' time definitely did think the commandment to love your neighbor meant only some people & not others.
How do I know that?
Because Jesus spends a lot of time telling them they're wrong. It's one of his favorite topics, actually.
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At the end of the day, I’m not totally sure any of my philosophical views actually work. Doing the best I can here. Philosophy is hard.
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Thomas Reid's most significant philosophical insight is that if you don't start from a position of trust in your faculties you're irremediably epistemically screwed.
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In a question as complex as the existence of God, there's bound to be evidence/arguments on both sides & problems on both sides.
Pretending your side has all the evidence & your opponent's has all the problems is silly at best & dishonest at worst.
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There's a serious point behind this though: if philosophy is a kind of game & you can just stop playing philosophy & play backgammon instead, then we shouldn't be demanding that the world conform to political, religious, moral, &c ideologies arrived at philosophically. /3
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Basically what I’m trying to say is: you can’t refute atheism by shouting “OBJECTIVE MORALITY!!” while pounding the table.
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Lots of evidence that this kind of quietude (ataraxia!) is Hume's real point, & the people yammering on about 'Humean' theories of causation, laws, etc. have missed it entirely. /end
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Sorry, but: if you can’t understand why anyone is an atheist OR you can’t understand why anyone is a theist, you haven’t worked very hard at understanding.
(Which might be ok—maybe you’ve got better things to do!)
I understand that some people believe in God, but I don't understand how they manage to do that.
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I tell my students: in order to write a good philosophy paper, you have to be able to feel the force/attraction of the opposing position.
I write serious papers against atheism, but only facetious tweets against presentism.
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Both Descartes and the founding figures of analytic philosophy seek to erase certain of their predecessors (Scholasticism; absolute idealism) and, by too much success, render parts of their own philosophy unintelligible to their successors.
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An apologist who was trying to persuade atheists would need to listen carefully & charitably to what atheists have to say. But I observe that many apologists do not do this. So what are they up to? Looks to me like many just want to make Christians feel intellectually superior.
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Disturbing that “God is good, genocide is bad” is such a controversial take among Twitter Christians. Really disturbing.
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Thomas Aquinas is actually fantastic at presenting objections to his view sympathetically and thoughtfully addressing them.
It’s ironic that so many internet Thomists act like anyone who takes these same objections seriously is an idiot.
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The atheists who think the only reason anyone is a Christian is 'indoctrination' & the Christians who think the only reason anyone is an atheist is a love of drug-fueled bisexual orgies have a lot in common.
We could all listen to people's reasons instead of psychologizing.
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I'm a Christian philosopher & I don't think God plays an ineliminable role in the best theories of the grounding of morality.
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Only Newton could’ve made an enemy of Leibniz. Leibniz goes so far out of his way to find as much agreement as possible & give credit to others. Newton is the evil twin.
Newton seems to have been such a genuinely mean-spirited person
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@morallawwithin
Ok, but what about the time Locke needed to figure out which plums were best?
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On July 1, I’ll be starting a new job as Professor of Philosophy and Academic Unit Head for the Department of Philosophy and Religion at James Madison University in Virginia (
@JMUCAL
). /1
Dr Kenneth L. Pearce joins us from Trinity College Dublin as the new Academic Unit Head for the Philosophy & Religion Department. Pearce’s research areas include the history of 17th and 18th century philosophy and philosophy of religion.
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Since Hume doesn't take philosophy that seriously, it's perhaps a bit ironic that so many very serious philosophers like to label their views 'Humean'. /2
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Not new, not a syllogism, doesn’t refute atheism. Thanks for playing, try again.
𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝗮 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘀𝘆𝗹𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝘀𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝘀𝗺:
1. Bestiality is wrong.
2. The atheistic worldview cannot establish why bestiality is wrong.
3. Therefore, the atheistic worldview cannot be true.
The only way the conclusion (3) can be false is if you
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We seriously need to teach more Islamic philosophy.
1st, b/c there’s a lot of great stuff there.
2nd, b/c it’s hugely influential on philosophers we already care about.
3rd, b/c ridiculous ignorant views like the one Khalil is answering are unfortunately widespread.
Muslims have several intellectual traditions where logic is studied and metaphysics and theology are regularly debated: Kalam, falsafa, hikma and Sufism.
Your tweets are all straw men
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This question is badly worded. The mere denial of theism obv can't account for anything.
The question is: "can you account for objective morality w/o appeal to God?"
Good question.
But "can you account for objective morality WITH appeal to God?" is also a good question.
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Yes, this is real data. Physicists are slightly MORE likely than philosophers of science to take a realist interpretation of electrons (& realism is far & away the more popular view among both).
FYI, I hold from a top secret source that this is what physicists and philosophers of science believe about electrons.
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Saw an airport security sign today that said “if it looks wrong, it is wrong.”
That sign looked wrong.
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So many ppl go around saying that 'objective morality' is some kind of knock-down objection to atheism. I've argued myself (in the debate book) that theism has advantages when it comes to explaining moral truths, but folks there's a lot of work to be done here! /1
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@Joey_Aszterbaum
@TEStoneWrites
‘Die’ was the original wording. A lot of modern hymnals have replaced it with ‘live’. Seems a little like…watering down…to me.
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Hume goes on and on about how much we can learn about human nature by cross-cultural comparisons, and then never seems to get any farther than comparing upper class Brits with upper class (ancient) Greeks and Romans. It's not great.
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Of course Kant wasn't just some random bigot. Dude couldn't go for a walk or attend a dinner party w/o working it into a philosophical system. He is probably one of history's most systematic bigots.
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I admit I have mixed feelings about this, but let's be clear about one thing: folks like Berkeley, Hume, & Kant were not just repeating dominant cultural views of the time. They were creative contributors to the debates that shaped the racist ideologies of the 19th century.
A decision to dename the Berkeley Library has been made today by the University's Board. Read full details here
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Just wrote this sentence: "For reasons that are not clear to me, many philosophers seem to find idealism unpalatable."
We'll see if I cut it out along the road to publication. But, seriously, analytic philosophers' reactions to idealism seems to me to be simply distaste.
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"Few men think; yet all have opinions."
George Berkeley, describing the internet, one assumes.
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My experience teaching philosophy of religion to undergrads (& also some of the discourse on here) suggests that a lot of ppl think in terms of ‘prepackaged’ worldviews. If the one they got in Sunday school isn’t right, the other one they know about is Dawkins-style atheism.
In terms of actual logical rigor, the argument for atheism from the Bible being flawed seems as flimsy as they come. And yet it’s not exceedingly rare for me to see people say something like this moved them to atheism. Perhaps they are misdescribing their own journey without ...
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There should be an edition of Spinoza with these blurbs on the cover.
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Fun fact: in "Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens" (1755) Kant investigates the intellectual capacities of the inhabitants of the other planets in the Solar System, arguing that ppl on Saturn are way smarter than us.
Not fun fact: the whole thing is super racist.
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“Evil is only a problem for atheists” is one of the worst apologetics tropes.
Evil is a problem for most theists (those who claim God is powerful, good, & wise).
The moral arg for God is a separate, unrelated issue.
The moral arg is not the sharpest tool in the shed.
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Philosophy is an activity (or family of activities). People who engage seriously in that activity are philosophers, regardless of whether they have academic credentials, whether they currently have a 'day job', etc.
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I don't think the Euthyphro Dilemma is unsolvable.
I do think the complexity and sophistication of the solutions shows that metaethics is hard and that it doesn't magically become easy if you believe in God.
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In the past, the church taught that it was sinful to lend money at interest. Today, people who unrepentantly identify as ‘bankers’ are admitted to the church & even to leadership. Have we diluted the gospel?
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The Bible repeatedly, consistently, emphatically commands love & practical care for the needs of 'the least of these', particular singling out immigrants ('aliens' or 'foreigners' depending on translation) for special concern in this context. /1
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So much more love on here for Spinoza than Leibniz. You folks are making a mistake. Spinoza's great & all, but didn't anyone tell you about the part of Leibniz's philosophy where God created the world specifically so that you can eat cookies?!
(Discourse on Metaphysics, §19)
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Since
@Philip_Goff
still has everyone talking about fine-tuning, here's the summary Graham Oppy and I agreed on for the glossary to Is There a God?
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The search for truth requires a certain level of passion—you have to care about getting things (closer to) right.
But it also requires a certain level of chill—you have to be able to consider views that (currently) seem very wrong to you without flipping out.
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I'm not CERTAIN there's a God & you shouldn't be either.
I BELIEVE in God & think I have good reason for doing so. But we walk by faith & not by sight, & the sooner we admit that the better.
Make your peace with uncertainty. It's ok, actually.
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Lucretius, Cicero, and Augustine are AT LEAST as influential in early modern philosophy as Plato and Aristotle.
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The only person I know of who ever demolished a whole philosophical paradigm in the space of a tweet is Elisabeth of Bohemia.
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The weirdest thing about Jesus mythicism on here is how hung up on it some atheists are. There were lots of purported wonder-workers & itinerant preachers in the Greco-Roman world, & lots of alleged messiahs in Roman Judea. Why get hung up on saying THIS one never existed?
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Many (not all!) people who like 'mathy' philosophical views (e.g., Bayesianism, classical decision theory, utilitarianism) have a bad habit of papering over the controversial philosophical principles that bridge the gap between the mathematical claims and the normative ones.
Reminder that if you’re statistically literate, veil of ignorance should push you towards utilitarianism
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Most of analytic philosophy of religion is a debate between a certain (somewhat narrow) range of interpretations of Christianity, on one side, & naturalistic atheism on the other side.
Most pop apologetics is even worse, assuming implausibly simplistic versions of each.
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I am once again begging—nay, IMPLORING—people who want to use metaethics for apologetics to learn literally anything about metaethics.
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Just learned from Facebook that
@helenreflects
has been permanently suspended from this site without explanation! WTF?!
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The majority of specialists in philosophy of religion (atheists as well as theists) think fine tuning is one of the most formidable arguments for the existence of God. I'm in the minority here, for two reasons, one scientific & one theological:
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Fact check: who believes in facts?
Like, in an ontologically serious kind of way.
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Hot tip: when you feel your 'side' is being strawmanned, don't say, "no one is saying that!" Somewhere on this site, someone on your 'side' definitely said that stupid thing (whatever it is).
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Robert M. Adams was, in my opinion, the greatest living Christian philosopher. He will be missed, but we will all continue to benefit from his legacy.
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To say that “If there is no moral accountability then moral obligation is worthless” is just to say that the only reason to be moral is fear of punishment.
This is a deeply immoral view.
If naturalism is true then there is no moral accountability.
If there is no moral accountability then moral obligation is worthless.
If moral obligation is worthless then one can commit evil without blame.
If one can commit evil without blame then there is no morality in
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Utilitarianism is the view that (from a moral perspective) everyone's pleasure/pain matters equally & NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.
Kantianism holds that everyone matters equally AS AN AGENT & not just as a locus of pleasure/pain.
Utilitarianism is just what you get when you take seriously the moral datum that *everyone matters equally*. Other views blatantly deny this, while trying to pretend otherwise.
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Relatedly: apologists want to make problems disappear (or convince us they never existed in the first place). Philosophers (good ones, at least) want to dwell on the problems & see what can be learned from them. Let's not sweep this one under the rug, shall we?
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Anyone expecting me to have something profound to say in defense of history of philosophy will be disappointed. All I have to offer is the empirical observation that, looking at myself & others, it appears to me that studying HoP helps one do better philosophy.
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Everybody does a bit of philosophy now and then. It's worth the effort to try to do it well.
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Something I hope philosophy classes can teach ppl is to LOVE encountering the problems & puzzles facing your own view. These are opportunities to learn & to think more deeply but many ppl (unfortunately incl some philosophers!) don’t take that opportunity & get defensive instead.
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If we ought to be good for goodness' sake, then how is it that the reason we ought not to pout is that Santa Claus is coming to town? Get your metaethics straight, children's Christmas songs!
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To say that only theism can provide an adequate theory of the foundations of morality is to stake out a controversial philosophical position in need of defense.
To say that atheists can’t be moral is to bear false witness against your neighbor.
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My biggest irritation in reading analytic philosophers' remarks about historical figures is when they describe a view as a 'confusion', 'blunder', or 'lapse' when the philosopher had carefully considered the consequences of, and alternatives to, the view in question.
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Today, I've been elected a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, an honor to which George Berkeley was elected in 1707. I'm very grateful for all the support and encouragement I've received from TCD and all of my colleagues over the past 5 years.
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Currently reading an analytic metaphysics paper that's talking about 'qualitative quiddities'—which is Latin for 'whatish whichnesses'.
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The habit of thought I am most trying to unlearn from my Evangelical background is seeing tensions, puzzles, & paradoxes in the Bible as threats to be eliminated. There is much more to be learned from dwelling & meditating on these than from getting rid of them.
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Never seen as much enthusiasm for a class as for my Philosophy & Science Fiction class this semester. It filled to capacity w/in a few hours when registration opened & now 2 classes in a row ALL the students were lined up in the hallway waiting when I arrived 10 minutes early.
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In a colloquium q&a I once heard, “suppose (for the sake of argument) I love my wife”.
Overheard in a Philosophy Department:
“Let’s assume that I have hands. Just what am I supposed to believe about my hands?”
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Why call arguments 'fallacious', 'invalid', 'weak', or 'unconvincing' when you could write, "This argument...has this misfortune in it..." (Locke, Essay, §1.2.3)? So much better!
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What’s at stake here?
Even the strongest versions of inerrancy typically allow Jesus’ parables to be fictional, and when Jesus references Jonah, he treats it as a kind of allegory. So no one’s theology should really be threatened by the question of Jonah’s historicity.
The book of Jonah is historical truth. There is NOTHING in the book that suggests it is a myth or allegorical.
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Seriously, can we stop repeating this nonsense?
1. Some ppl do hate fairies, leprechauns, etc.
2. It is possible to hate something that doesn't (really) exist.
3. Most atheists don't hate God, but those who do are not inconsistent.
This is worse nonsense than the banana.
“Atheists don’t hate fairies, leprechauns, or unicorns because they don’t exist. It is impossible to hate something that doesn't exist. Atheists — like the painting experts hated the painter — hate God because He does exist.”
—Ray Comfort
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I can’t think of any reasonable definition of ‘reasonable’ on which this is a reasonable statement.
Christianity is the only religion that is reasonable to believe.
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Descartes's most important philosophical idea was analytic geometry.
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Atheism does not entail reductive materialism.
There are naturalistic (i.e., respect for science) reasons for rejecting reductivism (see: ).
Atheism is compatible with a variety of views, not all of which are materialist at all.
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Atheists have a lot of trouble solving philosophical problems.
Theists also have a lot of trouble solving philosophical problems.
It’s because philosophical problems are hard.
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This will never get old.
thinking about that time local news interviewed alvin plantinga about his broken AC
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@Dervine7
I believe that back in the day (like, 17th/18th centuries) there were catalogs of books published in a given city in a given year, and they’d include which booksellers had them, and you might need that to mail order.
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There’s a class of philosophers who write very clearly w/o making their views clear. That is, it’s usually easy to tell what idea/argument they’re putting forward in a particular text, but very hard to attribute a stable position to them. Plato, Maimonides, Wittgenstein. Others?
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