This article uses recent work in philosophy of science and social epistemology to argue for a shift in analytic philosophy of religion from a knowledge-centric epistemology to an epistemology centered on understanding. Not only can an understanding-centered approach open up new avenues for the exploration of largely neglected aspects of the religious life, it can also shed light on how religious participation might be epistemically valuable in ways that knowledge-centered approaches fail to capture. Further, it can create new opportunities for (...) interaction with neighboring disciplines and can help us revitalize and transform stagnant debates in philosophy of religion, while simultaneously allowing for the introduction and recovery of marginalized voices and traditions. (shrink)

Medieval and early modern devotional works rarely receive serious treatment from philosophers, even those working in the subfields of philosophy of religion or the history of ideas. In this article, I examine one medieval devotional work in particular—the Middle High German image- and verse-program, Christus und die minnende Seele (CMS)—and I argue that it can plausibly be viewed as a form of medieval public philosophy, one that both exhibited and encouraged philosophical innovation. I address a few objections to my proposal—namely, (...) that CMS is neither public enough nor that it counts as proper philosophy—and I attempt to defend CMS’s public philosophical credentials in light of these objections. I conclude with a brief discussion of how devotional texts like CMS can help us do innovative public philosophy today. (shrink)

This Element looks at religious experience and the role it has played in philosophy of religion. It critically explores the history of the intertwined discourses on mysticism and religious experience, before turning to a few specific discussions within contemporary philosophy of religion. One debate concerns the question of perennialism vs. constructivism and whether there is a 'common core' to all religious or mystical experience independent of interpretation or socio-historical background. Another central discussion concerns the epistemology of purportedly theophanic experience and (...) whether a perceptual model of religious experience can provide evidence or justification for theistic belief. The Element concludes with a discussion of how philosophy of religion can productively widen its treatment of religious experience in the service of creating a more inclusive and welcoming discipline. (shrink)

Although there has been much discussion regarding shame and guilt, not enough has been said about the complexities of the relationship between the two. In this paper, I examine one way in which I take shame and guilt to interact – namely in cases of so-called “survivor’s guilt” among victims of trauma. More specifically, I argue that survivor’s guilt may represent a kind of response to feelings of shame – one which is centrally tied to the central philosophical notions of (...) autonomy and integrity. (shrink)

In 2010, pitcher Armando Galarraga was denied a perfect game when umpire Jim Joyce called Jason Donald safe at first with two outs in the bottom of the 9th. In the numerous media discussions that followed, Joyce’s ‘blown’ call was commonly referred to as ‘mistaken’, ‘wrong’, or otherwise erroneous. However, this use of language makes some not uncontroversial ontological assumptions. It claims that the fact that a runner is safe or out has nothing to do with the ruling of the (...) umpire himself, but rather with some state of the universe that does not depend on the umpire for its existence. In this paper, I recast the problem as a version of Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma and argue that the view implied by the above assertions is actually misguided. Instead, I hope to show that an alternative view – what I call ‘restricted umpire voluntarism’ – is actually more in line with the spirit of the game of baseball and is not as counterintuitive as it may appear.. (shrink)

In this introductory chapter, we discuss some of the challenges raised by the project of pluralization in the discipline of philosophy. We look at a few theoretical approaches to pluralization that this volume takes up—namely, the figure-based approach, the global approach, and the genre-based approach—and we consider what the pluralization project might also mean for philosophical pedagogy. Finally, we give a brief summary of the contributions in this volume and provide possible cross-references for each chapter.

In this paper we argue that to adequately capture the complicated relationship between Descartes' work and late medieval thought, philosophers need to think not only about his ideas but also about his presentation and choice of genre. Reading the Meditations as a mere discursive treatise containing a progressive and consistent set of arguments intended to establish a particular philosophical position fails to appreciate the eponymous genre that Descartes explicitly chose to employ in writing them. Instead, we argue that reading the (...) text in light of the long tradition of contemplative meditative literature opens up a radically new way of interpreting the Meditations as a “mystagogical” project of spiritual edification and epistemic and volitional transformation. During such a transformation, the meditator undergoes a series of revelatory experiences structurally similar to those we find in various so-called “mystical” or “mystagogical”literature, in the Christian West. We show how paying attention to these mystagogical aspects of the Meditations can open up new avenues for understanding the connection between the theoretical, practical, and theological aspects of Descartes' thought. Such a reading resolves a number of seemingly glaring problems and peculiarities in the Meditations including the Cartesian circle, and the tension in the Cartesian notion of the freedom of the will. We also argue that the odd detours the meditator takes in the Sixth Meditation through physiology are not mere digressions but rather mark an often overlooked aspect of the mystagogical story – the return to embodiment as a transformed self. Indeed, the overly intellectualist emphasis of contemporary scholars on both the contemplative aspects of mystagogical literature and the epistemological focus of Descartes' project in the Meditations have caused them to largely overlook the ways in which the aim of both medieval and Cartesian meditation involves a transformative re-orientation of the whole person and their understanding of the world – one which has practical, moral, and social consequences that have gone underexplored in discussions of these texts. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine various philosophical approaches to religious experience and natural theology and look at some ways in which the former might be relevant for the latter. I argue that by thinking more about oft-overlooked or -underemphasized understandings of a) what might constitute religious experience and b) what functions natural theology might serve, we can begin to develop a more nuanced approach to natural theological appeals to religious experience — one that makes use of materially mediated religious experience (...) to develop a natural theology more sensitive to the varieties of experience of lived religion “on the ground”. (shrink)

From a theoretical standpoint, the problem of human suffering can be understood as one formulation of the classical problem of evil, which calls into question the compatibility of the existence of a perfect God with the extent to which human beings suffer. Philosophical responses to this problem have traditionally been posed in the form of theodicies, or justifications of the divine. In this article, I argue that the theodical approach in analytic philosophy of religion exhibits both morally and epistemically harmful (...) tendencies and that philosophers would do better to shift their perspective from the hypothetical “God’s-eye view” to the standpoint of those who actually suffer. By focusing less on defending the epistemic rationality of religious belief and more on the therapeutic effectiveness of particular imaginings of God with respect to suffering, we can recover, (re)construct, and/or (re)appropriate more virtuous approaches to the individual and collective struggle with the life of faith in the face of suffering. (shrink)

Issues surrounding pregnancy loss are rarely addressed in Christian philosophy. Yet a modest estimate based on the empirical and medical literature places the rate of pregnancy loss between fertilization and term at somewhere between 40–60%. If miscarriage really is as common as the research gives us to believe, then it would seem a pressing topic for a Christian philosophy of the future to address. This paper attempts to begin this work by showing how thinking more closely about pregnancy loss understood (...) as a grievable event can have a profound impact on the way we think about particular theoretical debates in Christian philosophy and provide opportunities for the discipline to put its skills to use in the development of helpful conceptual and hermeneutical resources for those grieving such losses. However, this will require seeking out and taking seriously the testimony of those who have undergone pregnancy loss, as well as getting clearer on how best to conceptualize pregnancy and its loss in the first place. (shrink)

In this chapter, we examine a few potential problems when inquiring into the ethics of medieval Christian and Islamic mystical traditions: First, there are terminological and methodological worries about defining mysticism and doing comparative philosophy in general. Second, assuming that the Divine represents the highest Good in such traditions, and given the apophaticism on the part of many mystics in both religions, there is a question of whether or not such traditions can provide a coherent theory of value. Finally, the (...) antinomian tendencies and emphasis on passivity of some mystics might lead one to wonder whether their prescriptive exhortations can constitute a coherent theory of right action. We tackle each of these concerns in turn and discuss how they might be addressed, in an attempt to show how medieval mysticism, as a fundamentally practical enterprise, deserves more attention from practical and moral philosophy than it has thus far received. (shrink)

While some philosophical models reduce religious faith to either mere belief or affect, more recent accounts have begun to look at the volitional component of faith. In this spirit, John Bishop has defended the notion of faith as a ‘doxastic venture’. In this article, I consider Bishop's view in detail and attempt to show that his account proves on the one hand too permissive and on the other too restrictive. Thus, although the doxastic-venture model offers certain advantages over other prominent (...) views in the philosophy of religion, it still falls short of providing us with an ultimately satisfactory account of religious faith. (shrink)

There are at least three basic phenomena that philosophers traditionally classify as paradigm cases of irrationality. In the first two cases, wishful thinking and self-deception, a person wants something to be true and therefore ignores certain relevant facts about the situation, making it appear to herself that it is, in fact, true. The third case, weakness of will, involves a person undertaking a certain action, despite taking herself to have an all-things-considered better reason not to do so. While I think (...) that Stephen Colbert's notion of "truthiness" might be able to fit the mold of each of these three kinds of irrationality, it applies most directly to cases of wishful thinking and self-deception — and it’s these two types of irrationality that I discuss extensively in this paper. As we will see, there are some troubling philosophical problems that arise regarding phenomena like self-deception. But we can use the concept of truthiness to show how these “paradoxes of irrationality” may be resolved without denying the fundamental irrationality of truthiness itself. -/- An earlier version of this paper ("Truthiness, Self-Deception, and Intuitive Knowledge") appeared in "The Daily Show and Philosophy" (2007). (shrink)

Jon Stewart's continued criticism of the inconsistency and irrationality of the American media, the notion of truthiness has relevance for any fan of The Daily Show. This chapter looks a little bit more closely at two notions of truthiness. Focusing on the first sense, it draws some parallels between truthiness and paradigm cases of motivated epistemic irrationality like wishful thinking and self‐deception. Then, it turns to the second sense to see if relying on our guts in the way Colbert suggests (...) might sometimes be rational. (shrink)

In the "Ethics", Abelard discusses the example of a judge who knowingly convicts an innocent defendant. He claims that this judge does rightly when he punishes the innocent man to the full extent of the law. Yet this claim seems counterintuitive, and, at first glance, contrary to Abelard’s own ethical system. Nevertheless, I argue that Abelard’s ethical system cannot be viewed as completely subjective, since the rightness of an individual act of consent is grounded in objective standards established by God. (...) Likewise, any particular civil government must derive its authority objectively from the natural and/or Christian laws, which ground its possibility and function. In this paper, I examine Abelard’s explication of the natural law, discoverable through reason, and the divine laws, knowable only through revelation, in order to explore what form an adequate civil law would have to take under which the judge could be said to have acted rightly. (shrink)

This collection of 15 accessible essays on neglected philosophical figures and traditions aims to provide readers with concrete access points to less familiar philosophical sources and methods. Showcasing the latest research by both up-and-coming and well-established scholars, each essay focuses on a particular topic relevant to the pluralization of the history of philosophy and offers advice for incorporating the figure, theme, or approach into the philosophy classroom.

This micro-summary and extended overview for the Special Divine Action Project discusses the connection between divine action and religious experience.

I begin this review with a brief overview of the book itself, followed by a discussion of its pedagogical usefulness as a text in Philosophy of Sport and Philosophy of Religion courses. I then move on to discuss a few points in the book that I take to be especially interesting and/or problematic from a philosophical point of view.