I believe we are doing some cutting-edge work in our two programs, the MA Christian Apologetics & MA Science and Religion at Talbot School of Theology. Please consider joining us!
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Can we have knowledge if naturalism is true?
We are doing much cutting-edge work in the MA Christian Apologetics program at Talbot School of Theology. Please join us!
Here’s one of them. One of my biggest interests is to see what needs to be real for us to have knowledge. One key focus for me has been to see if we can have knowledge, given naturalism.
Here, I give a talk on that subject, using the views of a leading philosopher of neuroscience, Daniel Dennett. I try to show that we cannot have knowledge based on naturalism. I also have written on this topic in (e.g.) Naturalism and Our Knowledge of Reality: Testing Religious Truth-claims.
I think this is an important line of argument we can use to help show naturalism is false. For, there are many things we do in fact know. But that must be due to the reality of a very different worldview.
Ethics & Critical Race Theory
Here’s a new video created and posted by my program, the MA Christian Apologetics at Talbot School of Theology/Biola University. The ethics of CRT is one of my latest areas of research, and now I am working with one of our graduates, Michael Williams, on a forthcoming book. One of the things we are trying to do is give a careful description of CRT, including its underlying philosophical presuppositions, and then assess it in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. This talk gives an overview of several of those things.
Dr. R. Scott Smith talks on Critical Race Theory (youtube.com)
Article: “Propositions: Who Needs Them? Craig’s Nominalism Revisited”
This essay came out in Philosophia Christi 24:2 (2022). Here’s an abstract:
William Lane Craig has defended nominalist forms of “anti-Platonism” as normative for orthodox Christians. He believes Platonic abstract objects (AOs) undermine God’s uniqueness as the only being that exists a se. Yet, I will argue that his view actually depends upon the reality of AOs. Furthermore, I will draw upon insights from phenomenology. By paying close attention to what can be before our minds in conscious awareness, I will argue that, contrary to Craig, we can become aware of the reality of Platonic, ante rem universals, including propositions and properties.
I will develop my argument first by sketching Craig’s nominalist views and his important use of Carnap’s linguistic frameworks. In so doing, I will draw extensively upon his essay, “Propositional Truth – Who Needs It?” to sketch the importance of his neutralist theory of reference and his deflationary view of truth, and how those relate to truth as correspondence. Second, I will draw upon Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological method and apply it to examples of Craig’s concrete particulars. I will focus especially on Craig’s linguistic examples. My findings will serve as evidence against his nominalist anti-Platonism, and in favor of ante rem universals.
Interview about my new book, “Exposing the Roots of Constructivism”
I was interviewed this summer by Dr Sahar Joakim about my new book on nominalism:
New essay on the ethics of Critical (Race) Theory
I recently had an essay, “Can Critical Theory, and Critical Race Theory, Ground Human Dignity, Justice, and Equality?” published in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. In it, I argue that “CT” and “CRT” seem to appeal to several moral absolutes, such as the treatment of all humans with dignity, respect, equality, and justice, as well as the protection of minority groups from oppression and domination by the majority group. Arguably, these positions presuppose that humans are intrinsically valuable.
Yet, I will argue that CT and CRT have no basis for that presupposition, nor for its other moral stances, due to their rejection of essences, including that humans are made in God’s image. Indeed, our “common humanity,” which must be merely material ontologically, and our self-conceptualizations (or, senses of our identities) are inadequate bases for rights, leaving our moral value as just a result of hegemonic power, the very position that CT and CRT reject.
To help show this, first I will provide an overview of CT and then CRT, along with a general survey of their core ethical positions. Next, I will begin my assessment with a survey of some of these theories’ strengths. Then I will critically examine these theories’ abilities to preserve their key moral positions. Last, I will draw some conclusions particularly for Christians.
You can read that essay here.
New academic book:
Exposing the Roots of Constructivism: Nominalism and the Ontology of Knowledge
My newest academic book has been published by Lexington. I examine the prospects of nominalism (trope, austere, and metalinguistic) to be able to preserve the qualities of reality. However, I argue that it cannot preserve them, and so we will not be able to have any knowledge (& we wouldn’t even exist).
I then apply my findings to a number of disciplines, such as science, ethics, religion, and several other disciplines.
Yet, surely we do know many things. Since that is so, there must be a different ontology that is true other than nominalism. I argue instead for a type of Platonic universals.
The book is a culmination and extension of my many essays and presentations on nominalism.
New philosophy book!
From Roman & Littlefield, the publisher’s website:
Constructivism dominates over other theories of knowledge in much of western academia, especially the humanities and social sciences. In Exposing the Roots of Constructivism: Nominalism and the Ontology of Knowledge, R. Scott Smith argues that constructivism is linked to the embrace of nominalism, the theory that everything is particular and located in space and time. Indeed, nominalism is sufficient for a view to be constructivist.
However, the natural sciences still enjoy great prestige from the “fact-value split.” They are often perceived as giving us knowledge of the facts of reality, and not merely our constructs. In contrast, ethics and religion, which also have been greatly influenced by nominalism, usually are perceived as giving us just our constructs and opinions.
Yet, even the natural sciences have embraced nominalism, and Smith shows that this will undermine knowledge in those disciplines as well. Indeed, the author demonstrates that, at best, nominalism leaves us with only interpretations, but at worst, it undermines all knowledge whatsoever. However, there are many clear examples of knowledge we do have in the many different disciplines, and therefore those must be due to a different ontology of properties. Thus, nominalism should be rejected. In its place, the author defends a kind of Platonic realism about properties.
Coming soon to Denver! Hope to see you there!
Critical Race Theory and Relativism
Introduction
Thus far, I have explored several issues with CRT, including its antiessentialism and materialism, and some key implications for ethics. Though Crits appeal to some core moral principles and virtues, such as the need to do justice, and the dignity and equality of all humans, morals on CRT cannot be intrinsically right or wrong. Nor is there an essence beyond their own constructs that grounds and defines these morals as what they are. Instead, these and other morals are their products, being just their interpretations.
There is another implication of their views for ethics, and we can see this most clearly by examining some of Ibram Kendi’s claims about antiracism and its relationship to cultural relativism.
Kendi on Antiracism and Cultural Relativism
Kendi writes that “a racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.”[1] Kendi rejects the use of any arbitrary cultural standards as the universal measure of “success” or morality. Since he thinks there are no universal standards, measuring one racial group’s “standing” vis-à-vis another racial group is racist. Even more strongly, he asserts that cultural relativity is the essence of cultural antiracism. That is, “when we see cultural difference, we are seeing cultural difference – nothing more, nothing less.”[2]
Assessing Kendi’s Claim
Now, in light of Christianity, all humans are made in God’s image and thus are intrinsically valuable. In that respect, it is true that people of a given racial group are not inferior to those of another – all are equal in that crucial sense. Yet, on CRT’s antiessentialism, there is no room for appeals to essences that could ground our intrinsic value.
Furthermore, there may be more morals that are held in common across cultures than Kendi might realize. He and others I have been discussing stress the importance of equality, dignity, justice, respect, and more, all of which seem to be deeply held principles that people simply seem to know are valid. Consider a bit more in detail the importance of treating other humans with respect. How that core moral is worked out in a given cultural setting may look quite different than in another one. For instance, many Asian cultures have been deeply influenced by Confucian teachings, especially in terms of filial piety. So, children, even when adults, are expected to show a deep deference to the wishes of the family patriarch. Yet, in other cultures, respect may be shown quite differently. Eskimos honor and respect their elderly by sending them off on an ice flow. Here, there is a common moral principle, yet a difference in a secondary sense, in how that principle should be applied.
However, as we have seen on CRT, there is no room for any essences and universal principles. So, even the core morals that he and others appeal to, like justice, respect, and human dignity, and particulars to a given group. Moreover, these morals are just their interpretations. That means that the morals themselves for which they advocate are relative to a given group. However, that undermines the strength of his and others’ moral contentions, including that racism is wrong, and not just according to them, and justice is good, and so forth.
Since morals are just the products of particular groups, there is no basis why others should also believe and act as he and others do. Moreover, he and others lack a moral basis for critiquing some clearly racist groups, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan. Furthermore, even for Kendi, it does not seem to be the case that cultural differences are just cultural differences. Take the Jim Crow laws of the southern U. S. states. According to this claim of his, it seems those laws were just cultural, descriptive differences, yet that does not do justice to the fact that these laws were deeply immoral.
So, on Kendi’s view, even if a minority group believes that racism is wrong, but the majority doesn’t, there is no shared moral basis to show that the majority’s position is immoral. It would be immoral only to the minority, for its morals are relative to it. Nor would the majority would be immoral, for it constructed its morals as its members saw fit.
Instead, what Kendi and others need to make their many important moral claims stick is a grounding in universal morals, which have an essential nature. And, humans need to be intrinsically valuable due to their essential nature. Yet, since they have forsaken these grounds, his and other Crits’ arguments simply cannot sustain themselves.
[1] Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist (New York: One World, 2019), 20. Now, he prefers the description of being antiracist to being a Crit. Nevertheless, Kendi does seem to be embracing the core ideas of CRT, and so here I will consider him under that description.
[2] Kendi, 91.