Schedule of Events

Friday, March 7, 2008

11:30 AM – 12:20 PM            Session 1 (LH 05, BA):

                                                “Can God be a Moral Agent?  Divine Goodness and the Problem of Morally Significant Freedom and Praise”

                                                By Ross Inman, Biola University

                                                Commentator: Than Vlachos, Texas Tech University

12:30 PM – 1:20 PM               Session 2 (LH 05, BA):

                                                "Some Problems With Pruss's Ontomystical Arguments"

                                                By Ryan Byerly, Baylor University

                                                Commentator: Phillip Zema, Texas Tech University

1:30 PM – 3:00 PM                 Lunch (Place TBA):

3:00 PM – 3:50 PM                 Session 3 (LH 01, English):

                                                "Re-reconsidering Kenotic Christology: A Response to Ronald Feenstra"

                                                By Jonathan Suit, Biola University

                                                Commentator: Arezoo Islami, Texas Tech University

4:00 PM – 5:45 PM                 Keynote Address (LH 01, English):

                                                Title: “Argument from Evil”

                                                By Michael Tooley, University of Colorado, Boulder

5:45 PM – 7:00 PM                 Reception  Philosophy Lounge, Philosophy Building

7:30 PM                                   Conference Dinner

Saturday, March 8, 2008

10:00 AM – 10: 50 AM           Session 4 (LH 01, English):

                                                "A Jamesian Approach to Miracle Claims"

                                                By James G. Quigley, Florida State University

                                                Commentator: Travis White

11:00 AM – 11:50 AM            Session 5 (LH 01, English);

                                                "In Defense of Trinity-monotheism: Individuation Without Numerically Distinct Substances"

                                                By Robbie Hirsch, Biola University

                                                Commentator: Michael Ducey, Texas Tech University

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM               Lunch (Place TBA)

1:30 PM – 2:20 PM                 Session 6 (LH 01, English)

                                                "What Could God Have Made? A Response to Geirsson and Losonsky"

                                                By Craig Martin, University of South Carolina

                                                Commentator: Curtis Sharp, Texas Tech University

2:30 PM – 3:20 PM                 Session 7 (LH 01, English)

                                                "The Neglected Premise in Plantinga's Ontological Argument"

                                                By Nelly Dib, University of Notre Dame

                                                Commentator: Michael Morales, Texas Tech University

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM                 Session 8 (LH 01, English)

                                                Presenter: Possibilities of Self-Deception and Religious Insight.

                                                By Michael Cooper, Texas Tech University

                                                Commentator: Ross Inman, Biola University

5:00 PM                                   Reception (Dr. Curzer’s house)

Paper Abstracts

“Can God be a Moral Agent?  Divine Goodness and the Problem of Morally Significant Freedom and Praise”

By Ross Inman, Biola University

This paper seeks to defend the coherence of God’s essential moral goodness. I begin by examining the divine nature from the framework of perfect being theology; that God is the greatest possible being who necessarily exemplifies a maximally perfect set of compossible great-making properties. I then explore two conceptual difficulties that arise from God’s essential moral goodness: that God does not have the freedom necessary for moral agency and that He is not morally praiseworthy for His actions.  I attempt to secure God’s free agency by maintaining that He performs an action freely if and only if He could have refrained from causing His performing that action. Given this notion of divine agency, I seek to answer the second difficulty by maintaining that God is both a morally good agent and worthy of praise insofar as He is responsible for freely performing supererogatory actions toward his creatures.

"Some Problems With Pruss's Ontomystical Arguments"

By Ryan Byerly, Baylor University

In this paper, I offer three criticisms of Alex Pruss’s ontomystical arguments. First, Pruss’s presentation lacks a criterion for distinguishing between phenomenal and non-phenomenal experiences. This criticism shows that Pruss’s ability to respond to some objections to his argument is deficient. Second, there are plausible counterexamples to an important principle relied on by Pruss. This principle, called Śamkara’s principle, says that nothing which is phenomenally experienced is impossible. Third, human beings are not terribly proficient at identifying modal experiences. In fact, it seems that they quite commonly misidentify non-modal experiences as if they were modal experiences. If these three criticisms of Pruss’s arguments are accurate, then they demonstrate that we should not accept Pruss’s ontomystical arguments without further support of their premises. I conclude the paper by indicating how future work on the ontomystical arguments will need to address these criticisms. 
 

"Re-reconsidering Kenotic Christology: A Response to Ronald Feenstra"

By Jonathan Suit, Biola University

In this paper, I will critique two rejoinders in Ronald Feenstra’s article “Reconsidering Kenotic Christology” to Tom Morris in the book Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement. In section i, I delimit the debate by offering up the definition of Kenotic Christology (KC) that I will work with in this paper. In sections ii and iii, I lay out the “permissive problem” and its objections. I conclude that permissiveness is not a problem insofar as the following objection in my paper (i.e., the Intuitions Argument) fails to be problematic. Unfortunately, the Intuitions Argument is problematic. Section iv explores this argument.

"A Jamesian Approach to Miracle Claims"

By James G. Quigley, Florida State University

I argue that it is possible that a rational, conscientious, informed person be in a situation of warranted epistemic stalemate about whether to believe or disbelieve that a miracle has happened.  I claim that the method of reasoning involved in assessing whether a miracle has occurred is inference to the best explanation.  Then I discuss indeterminacies that arise in inferences to the best explanation, which give rise to the possibility of epistemic stalemates about what is the best explanation of a given body of evidence.  This applies even to alleged miraculous events.  In the last section it is argued that, in the face of this epistemic indeterminacy, it is rational for one to cultivate belief, for practical reasons, that the miracle has occurred.  This is, as I suggest, because miracle claims meet standards for what makes such belief cultivation practically rational, such as those set forth by William James’s “The Will to Believe.”

"In Defense of Trinity-monotheism: Individuation Without        Numerically Distinct Substances"

By Robbie Hirsch, Biola University

This paper explores several different models for understanding the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and then proceeds examines one of those models in light of contemporary analytic metaphysics.  In particular the question is raised whether haecceities can individuate parts without entailing numerically distinct substances.

"What Could God Have Made? A Response to Geirsson and Losonsky"

By Craig Martin, University of South Carolina

JL Mackie wrote that the orthodox theist “must now be prepared to believe, not merely what can not be proved, but what can be disproved from other beliefs he also holds.”¹  Specifically, Mackie was referring to the problem of evil; how can the orthodox theist consistently hold that God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent given the presence of evil in the world? I argue that Alvin Plantinga articulated a successful defense to the problem of evil.  Heimer Geirsson and Michael Losonsky disagree with me on this count.  In an article entitled “What God Could Have Made,” they quote Mackie in asking, “But how could there be logically contingent states of affairs, prior to the creation and existence of any created being with free will, which an omnipotent god would have to accept and put up with?”²  They assert that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God should be able to actualize people who are both free and morally good.  Important in this assertion is the claim it is logically possible for an agent to be both always morally good and significantly morally free.  I grant this assertion, but argue that it is possible that the actualization of the state of affairs consistent with moral perfection is necessarily in the control not of God but of the created moral agents.  It is important to note that, to defeat Mackie’s charge of incoherence, it is not necessary to show that this is true, only that it is possibly true; that is, that it is not necessarily inconsistent with the concepts of omnipotence and omnibenevolence.  In arguing this, I will first examine the issue of omnipotence.  Next, I will briefly articulate Plantinga’s free will defense.  Then, after considering the concerns of the objectors, I will examine a contingent state of affairs that I believe illustrates how their objections fall short. 

The Neglected Premise in Plantinga’s Ontological Argument

By Nelly Dib, University of Notre Dame

This paper critically examines a premise neglected in discussions of Plantinga’s ontological argument: that maximal greatness entails maximal excellence in all possible worlds. This paper shows that the premise is ambiguous and can be taken either as a definition or as a more standard premise with external support. In both cases, there are fatal objections to Plantinga’s argument. If

the premise is a definition, then it fails to add plausibility to the conclusion. If the premise is not a definition, then the premises of Plantinga’s argument cannot all be true at the same time, which renders the ontological argument unsound.

“Possibilities of Self-Deception and Religious Insight”

By Michael Cooper, Texas Tech University

The propensity of humans towards self-deception is often used as an argument against religion.  It is particularly effective against the credibility of mystical perception.  Mystics claim to have gained some sort of perceptual insight about the divine or the universe that is not otherwise accessible to humans.  They advance their perceptions as evidence for whatever they claim to have come in contact with.  Every world religion seems to rely to a large extent on private evidence in this way.  The task falls to all of us to discredit someone else's private evidence in order to be justified.  The atheist must show that the theist's private evidence is wrong, the agnostic must show that the theist's private evidence is not conclusive, and the believer must show that those who believe contradictory things are wrong.  Arguing that the other person is deceiving him or her self undermines that person's evidence by showing that its source is not connected in the right way to what it purports to be about.  Be that as it may, it is a useless concept if we cannot define self-deception.  In this essay I will examine two different theories of self-deception, and then advance a third.  Once I have done that we can determine what effect this has on religious evidence.