In this paper, the authors argue for two main claims: first, that the epistemic results of group deliberation can be superior to those of individual inquiry; and, second, that successful deliberative groups depend on individuals exhibiting deliberative virtues. The development of these group-deliberative virtues, the authors argue, is important not only for epistemic purposes but political purposes, as democracies require the virtuous deliberation of their citizens. Deliberative virtues contribute to the deliberative synergy of the group, not only in terms of (...) improving the quality of the group's present decisions, but also improving the background conditions for continued group deliberation. The authors sketch a preliminary schedule of these group-deliberative virtues modelled on Aristotle's conception of virtue as the mean between two extreme vices. The virtues discussed in this article include deliberative wit, friendliness, empathy, charity, temperance, courage, sincerity, and humility. (shrink)

This article elucidates a unique metaethical theory implicit in the work of several thinkers associated with the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. After positioning that theory within a broader landscape of metaethical positions endorsed by several prominent contemporary Christian philosophers and theologians, we address the concern that, when attending to the Euthyphro dilemma, the Restoration-inspired combination metaethical theory inevitably collapses into either an unalloyed divine command theory or an unalloyed natural law theory. In explaining how this sort of worry can be mitigated, (...) we offer reason to think that the nonreductive, combination metaethical theory in question constitutes potentially fertile territory for further scholarly work in Christian ethics. (shrink)

C. S. Peirce develops a novel argument for belief in God in a 1908 paper he entitled “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God.”1 That essay has received a fair amount of attention in recent years,2 but Peirce’s overall argument remains somewhat obscure. There is still more work to be done in explicating its basic structure and determining whether the argument can withstand criticism. The purpose of this essay is to reconstruct Peirce’s argument in a way that reveals the (...) most pressing objections to which it is susceptible.Peirce’s overall argument consists of three interrelated sub-arguments. First, Peirce leads us through a meditative or contemplative process through which the belief in God’s reality is.. (shrink)

There is a tension between Robert Talisse's rejection of Deweyan democracy and his project of formulating a workable Peircean conception of democracy. If he follows Rawls in taking reasonable pluralism to be a permanent condition, then his Peircean conception of democracy is undermined. But, if he does not commit to the permanence of reasonable pluralism, then his rejection of Deweyan democracy is problematic. Since he chooses the latter interpretation, Talisse must bite the bullet and recognize that Peircean epistemic perfectionists cannot (...) yet bid a definitive farewell to Deweyan democracy. (shrink)

In this monograph, authors J. Caleb Clanton and Kraig Martin argue that two classical approaches to moral grounding (natural law theory and divine command theory), while commonly opposed, can nevertheless be combined into a "third way" through precepts derived from the Stone-Campbell tradition. As such, this work represents an attempt to show the rich potential the Stone-Campbell tradition has in contributing to important, long-standing metaethical and philosophical questions.

The years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War II are often seen as a golden age of philosophical thought in the United States, thanks in part to the early development of pragmatism. Together, the pragmatists and other classical American philosophers of the time period addressed many of the issues still under debate in philosophy today, and their influence is still evident. Yet many of their contributions to philosophy of religion have not yet received (...) the critical analysis they deserve. In Philosophy of Religion in the Classical American Tradition, J. Caleb Clanton reconstructs, evaluates, and extends a variety of views in philosophy of religion drawn from, inspired by, or developed in response to the classical American philosophical tradition. Problem-based and argument-driven, each chapter explores a salient issue in philosophy of religion by engaging with such thinkers as C. S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, John Dewey, and Edward Scribner Ames, as well as two prominent contemporary inheritors of the classical American philosophical tradition, Cornel West and Richard Rorty. Clanton addresses a wide variety of topics, including the reality of God, the veridicality of mystical experience, the problem of evil, the efficacy of petitionary prayer, religious naturalism, and the role of religion in the democratic public square. For scholars and teachers of philosophy and religious studies, Philosophy of Religion in the Classical American Tradition will serve as a valuable resource for engaging with the history of philosophy of religion in the United States. (shrink)

Scholars of the classical American philosophical tradition have not written much about prayer, despite the fact that almost every single one of the major figures of this tradition acknowledged its significance. The gap in the literature is notable in the case of George Santayana, who discusses prayer in several of his major works. And of all the classical American philosophers, Santayana may have the most fully developed treatment of prayer, particularly as it relates to the problem of petitionary prayer. Yet (...) his account of payer has not received much attention. This is surprising since, on the one hand, many of Santayana’s other views on religion and spirituality have been widely commented on, and, on the other hand, prayer has been a prominent topic in philosophy of religion in recent decades. And it makes sense for scholars of the classical American tradition nowadays to consider Santayana’s views about prayer, at the least because this tradition concerns itself with the problems of ordinary people, and to most Americans–and even to some atheist Americans–prayer seems to matter a great deal. Santayana’s treatment of prayer can be organized into two phases. First, he offers a twofold case against the common view that petitionary prayer is materially efficacious–that is, the view that petitionary prayer can do something to affect whether God brings about a desired state of affairs that would not have otherwise obtained had the request for it not been made. (shrink)

This paper retraces some of the contrast between Aquinas and Scotus with respect to the metaphysical foundations of morality in order to highlight how subtle differences pertaining to the relationship between the divine will and the divine intellect can tip a thinker toward either an unalloyed natural law theory (NLT) or something that at least starts to move in the direction of divine command theory (DCT). The paper opens with a brief consideration of three distinct elements in Aquinas’s work that (...) might tempt one to view him in a DCT light, namely: his discussion of the divine law in addition to the natural law; his position on the so-called immoralities of the patriarchs; and some of his assertions about the divine will in relation to justice. We then respond to each of those considerations. In the second and third of these cases, following Craig Boyd, we illustrate how Aquinas’s conviction that the divine will follows the ordering of the divine intellect can help inform the interpretive disputes in question. We then turn our attention to Scotus’s concern about the freedom of the divine will, before turning to his discussion of the natural law in relation to the Decalogue as a way of stressing how his two-source theory of the metaphysical foundations of morality represents a clear departure from Aquinas in the direction of DCT. (shrink)

The statistics on plagiarism are staggering. No wonder, then, that many colleges and universities have started using plagiarism detection services (PDSs) such as Turnitin. But there are problems—and more problems than most critics have recognized. Whereas critics typically focus on legal issues related to intellectual property and privacy rights, I argue that unless we can reasonably suspect academic dishonesty, it’s morally problematic to require submission through a PDS. Even if we insist that the benefits of PDS use are worth the (...) costs of saddling students with an undeserved burden of proof, blanket PDS use—that is, using PDSs across the boardand without reasonable suspicion—is problematic because it conflicts with one of the aims of educational institutions: to cultivate students’ characters. Although blanket PDS use may in fact deter plagiarism, it doesn’t create an environment conducive to the formation of honor, and it may even be a hindrance. (shrink)

William Rowe’s criticism of the cosmological argument takes aim at the argument’s reliance on the principle of sufficient reason. In this short paper, I outline out how C. S. Peirce’s insights regarding abductive reasoning might be useful in defending the cosmological argument against Rowe’s worry concerning the principle of sufficient reason and the role it plays in the argument.

Extending recent appropriations of Charles S. Peirce's work in political theory, we argue that the same epistemic norms that justify democracy offer a plausible basis for justifying multiculturalist policies aimed at protecting at-risk cultural groups. Because this epistemic argument is compatible with a full range of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, it fully accommodates the fact of reasonable pluralism, thereby skirting the Rawlsian objection to which the multiculturalisms of Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka fall prey.

God and Morality in the Christian Tradition provides a scholarly overview from multiple contributors regarding questions of morality in regards to the Christian religious standpoint.

This article reconstructs and evaluates Josiah Royce’s treatment of the problem of evil. I begin with an explanation of how Royce understands Job’s situation in the biblical account to be representative of the human predicament with respect to God and evil . Next, I assess Royce’s account of three relatively familiar responses to the problem of evil he means to reject , and then I provide an analysis of his own proposal for addressing the problem . In the final section (...) of the paper, I raise four objections to Royce’s idealist theodicy. (shrink)

This book addresses heated debate among political thinkers concerned with the role of religious reasoning in the deliberation and justification of public policy and voting. The author critically examines various arguments drawn from mainstream liberal political theory, political theology, and American pragmatism, and offers a unique proposal for thinking through this issue.

This paper examines Cornel West’s attempt to offer an alternative to the dominant liberal view concerning the proper role of religion in the democratic public square. Whereas mainstream liberals seek strategies to keep religion and public life separate, West seeks to dissolve the apparent tension between religion and democratic citizenship by reconstructing religion pragmatically such that it can be rendered compatible with democracy. I argue that West’s proposal fails to be a viable alternative precisely because the “prophetic pragmatism” underwriting his (...) view is unethical to the extent that it relies upon manipulative relationships with traditional religious believers in African-American churches. (shrink)

William of Ockham is often thought to be the medieval progenitor of divine command theory. This paper contends that the origin of a thoroughgoing and fully reductive DCT position is perhaps more appropriately laid at the feet of Andrew of Neufchateau. We begin with a brief recapitulation of an interpretive dispute surrounding Ockham in order to highlight how there is enough ambiguity in his work about the metaphysical foundations of morality to warrant suspicion about whether he actually stands at the (...) origin of DCT. We then show how all such ambiguity is jettisoned in the work of Andrew, who explicitly rejects a position similar to one plausibly attributable to Ockham and also articulates a fully reductive DCT. (shrink)

In this reply I respond to the article "Can Peircean Epistemic Perfectionists Bid Farewell to Deweyan Democracy?" by J. Caleb Clanton and Andrew T. Forcehimes, in this journal issue.

J. Caleb Clanton’s excellent new book is a must read for scholars studying the “classical” American philosophical tradition and for philosophers of religion more generally. In each of the six main chapters, Clanton reconstructs and assesses an argument in the philosophy of religion made by one philosophers that belong to the classic American tradition. Clanton’s approach is analytical and precise but not overly technical. His careful reconstructions of each argument constitute an invaluable scholarly contribution, and his insightful (...) criticisms of each argument warrant the close attention of his philosophical peers. Clearly, Clanton’s book is the fruit of long hours spent “thinking with” the... (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

Telling a patient that the outcome of his illness is not good, or even hopeless, requires sensitivity and the ability to communicate with him in the setting of a hospital which is an unnatural environment divorced from family and friends. It is a task which must be taught and learned by doctors and nurses.

The existential analysis -- The death of dasein -- The timeliness of dasein -- The derivation of time -- The time of being.

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an astonishing (...) achievement. (shrink)

The received translation and interpretation of many of the technical terms current in the textile industry of the Roman Empire are inaccurate, because lexicographers have either fought shy of being precise, or have thought that they recognized in the ancient world technical processes which originated at a much later date. The evidence is often equivocal or insufficient, but may still yield details that have been overlooked. The textile expression scutulatus, to take an example, deserves more attention than Blümner has devoted (...) to it. When it refers to the appearance of a garment, Lewis and Short, s.v. scutulatus, translate ‘diamond or lozenge-shaped, checkered’. It seems worth while to attempt a more precise translation, and, if possible, to estimate the significance in context of the goods so designated. (shrink)

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, and not just out of thought, out of a partially functioning mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless and that time and the timeless each has its own unique value. The timeless, or real silence, that which alone can make for depth in one's living and (...) relating, can be there only when, in one's awareness, time and all that is related to time, have come to an end. An examination of a wide variety of statements made by writers, both past and present, shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past. 'Living beyond the One and the Many' invites readers to consider the possibility that what is presented in it can bring deep meaning to one's way of living in the world"--Publisher's description, back cover. (shrink)

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

Jeffrey Collins’ new book aims to presents Locke’s views on religious toleration in the light of Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy. At first blush, Hobbes seems an unusual choice as a point of co...