I just did an interview with Dr. Stan Wallace, the president of Global Scholar, on this topic. We explore several related topics, too.
Check it out here:
Category: Uncategorized
New book site!
Talbot/Biola philosophy & theology authors
Biola University now has a central website for the books by its philosophy & theology authors, including many of my own works. It is Shopeaglebooks. Enjoy!
Securing human dignity and respect
Here’s a brief overview of why I think one’s self-conceptualization (i.e., one’s “true self”) will not preserve one’s dignity.
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!
Moral Philosophy and Christian Theology: An Interview
I had an interview with Dennis Metzler in 2022 on the foundations of ethics.
New essay: Critical Theory and Abortion as an Act of Oppression
My new essay just came out in Christian Research Journal (Dec 2021). Here is a synposis:
Critical theory (CT) has become a major influence in society. It maintains that oppressed groups should be liberated from their oppressors. CT manifests itself in many ways, including critical race theory and feminist theory. That is, CT provides justification for women to be liberated from their patriarchal domination, and a crucial way that can be achieved is through the permissibility of abortion. Yet, on the contrary, I argue that abortion should be construed as immoral based on CT’s own internal logic. By determining the value of their unborn by their conceptualizations, women arbitrarily exercise power over and oppress their unborn.
Some counter that actually the unborn is an oppressor, restricting the woman’s freedom to make her own choices, as well as to define her own sense of identity via her self-conception. Another objection is that while the unborn are humans, they are not persons, for in order to count as persons, humans also have to have certain functional qualities, such as a self-concept. However, for CT, there is no equality on the basis of self-concepts. According to CT, there are no essences, and thus the claim that we are valuable because we have self-concepts is nothing but an interpretation given from a particular standpoint, which results in an arbitrary imposition of power. It is a much greater oppression for the woman to have the unborn put to death than for her to remain pregnant. Thus, taking CT consistently, the unborn need to be liberated from their oppression by abortion….
See that issue, pages 16-21.
Panel Discussion with William Lane Craig & Rich Davis on Craig’s Nominalism & the Atonement, EPS 2020
I noticed from announcement by Reasonable Faith that RF has posted a link to the panel discussion held at the 2020 Evangelical Philosophical Society national conference.
Here is that link if you’d like to watch.
And, since then, my article about this topic came out in Theologica.
Two August 2021 Updates
As is the case for all of us, COVID has impacted me as well. Part of it included a much heavier teaching load in the fall of ’20 and spring of ’21. Often I was scrambling just to keep up with online classes and students’ many posts!
Also, in many writing projects, I feel I have been “on hold,” waiting for publishers to reply to me or to release some work that I did some time ago. I have three book projects in the works, one on nominalism, another on critical race theory (an ethical, philosophical assessment), and how the church has been deeply affected by naturalism (and what to do about it).
I want to catch you up on some developments. Two essays have been published in the first half of 2021.
In January, my essay on nominalism and human dignity appeared:
“The Nominalist Foundations of Constructivist Dignity.” In The Inherence of Human Dignity: Foundations of Human Dignity, Vol. 1, ed. by Barry Bussey and Angus Menuge (Anthem Press, 2021).
These two edited volumes explore philosophical, legal, and other factors involved in human dignity discussions today (including the “new dignity”), and not just in the U.S.
Another essay was published this spring, and this one explores the implications of William Lane Craig’s anti-Platonism (or, nominalism) for the penal substitutionary theory of Christ’s atonement:
“Craig’s Anti-Platonism, Lowe’s Universals, and Christ’s Penal Substitutionary Atonement.” TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 5(2), 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14428/thl.v5i2.55993
Two more essays, as well as one book proposal, are out for review, so I hope to have some more updates sometime soon.
Making Sense of Morality: A Brief Assessment of MacIntyre’s Ethics
Image by Mary Pahlke from Pixabay
Some Contributions
What should we make of MacIntyre’s proposals? His ethics focuses on the importance of good character by embodying moral virtues and being authentic. He also draws attention to the importance of community. And, he emphasizes the need for living out the virtues, and not merely engaging in abstract theorizing.
Broad Concerns
As we have seen, MacIntyre and other authors writing in the light of the postmodern turn embrace nominalism. Yet, we have seen its disastrous effects, leaving us without any qualities whatsoever. So, there are no people, no morals (not even our core ones), no world, etc. But surely this is false, and it destroys morality.
We also have surveyed issues with historicism, which ends up with no way to start making interpretations. Yet, are we really so situated that we cannot access reality directly? Now, surely no human is blind to nothing, and we cannot know something exhaustively. Surely we have our biases, too.
Yet, from daily life, it seems we can notice that we do access reality. For example, how do children learn to form concepts of apples? It seems it is by having many experiences of them. Then they can notice their commonalities, and they can form a concept on that basis. Then they can use that concept to compare something else they see (e.g., a tomato) and notice if it too is an apple or not. Adults do this, too, when they use phones to refill prescriptions, or enter their “PIN” for a debit card purchase.
It seems to be a descriptive fact that we can compare our concepts with things as they are, just as in that apple example. We also can adjust our concepts to better fit with reality. I think we can know this to be so, if we pay close attention to what is consciously before our minds.
However, how we attend to what we are aware of can reflect patterns. We can fall into ruts, noticing some things while not attending to others. As J. P. Moreland suggests, “situatedness functions as a set of habit forming background beliefs and concepts that direct our acts of noticing or failing to notice various features of reality” (Moreland, 311). But these habits do not preclude us from accessing reality.
Specific Concerns
Now, MacIntyre rejects the soul as the basis for one’s being the same person through change. For one, it would be an essence, and he seems to think humans are just bodies (Dependent Rational Animals, 6). Can the unity of one’s narrative meet this need?
For him, a narrative does not have an essence; it is composed of sentences that tell a person’s story. At any time, the narrative’s identity just is the bundle of sentences that are its members. However, if a new sentence is added, then the set of members has changed, and a new story has taken the old one’s place. Sadly, then, someone cannot grow in virtue or rationality on this view, for they do not maintain their identity through change.
Moreover, can we really see that one tradition is rationally superior to another? MacIntyre in banking on our ability to become bilingual. However, on his view, a person at any time is constituted by his or her narrative, and that in turn cannot be pried off from the tradition on which it is based. When a person immerses him or herself into another tradition to learn its language, that learning always will be done from the interpretive standpoint of the first tradition, by which that person has been formed. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, since that person is narratively “constituted” by the first tradition’s conceptual/linguistic framework. But, as that person “learns” that second language, new sentences should be added to that person’s narrative. Yet, if so, that person no longer is the same! So it becomes impossible to see the rational superiority of another tradition on his own views.
For Further Reading
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3rd ed.; Dependent Rational Animals; and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
J. P. Moreland, “Two Areas of Reflection and Dialogue with John Franke,” Philosophia Christi 8:2 (2006)
R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 11