PHIL120 Final REV2

Philosophy of Religion

1. Kinds of Questions

• Does a divine reality (or realities) exist?

• What is the nature or essence of the divine?

• Can we offer rational arguments for/against God’s existence?

• How do revelation, religious experience, miracle-claims, and faith relate to philosophical inquiry?

• What attributes must a maximally perfect being possess (omniscience, omnipotence, perfect goodness, immutability, simplicity, aseity, etc.)?

• Problems of evil, divine hiddenness, religious language, and the compatibility of divine foreknowledge with human freedom.

2. Natural (Philosophical) vs. Revealed Theology

• Natural / Philosophical theology: Uses unaided human reason, common experience, and publicly available evidence.

• Revealed theology: Begins from claims delivered by special revelation (scripture, prophecy, mystical disclosure) and systematizes them.

• Key contrast: epistemic starting point—reason vs. faith‐content.

3. David B. Hart on “God” vs. “gods”

• When ‘God’ is used properly (across classical Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedānta, Neoplatonism, etc.):
  • Refers to the ultimate, transcendent, infinite, unconditioned source of all that is.
  • Pure act of being (ipsum\,esse\,subsistens), not one being among many.
  • Necessary, timeless, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simple, absolutely perfect.

• ‘gods’ (lower-case):
  • Finite, contingent, powerful but limited beings inside the cosmic order.
  • Have origin stories, change, can compete, exemplify anthropomorphic traits.

4. Investigating God vs. Investigating Fairies / gods

• God: approached via metaphysics, cosmological/ontological arguments, analysis of being, rational necessity.

• Fairies/gods: investigated like empirical entities—field observations, testimony, physical traces.

• Distinction tracks transcendent cause vs. intra-worldly objects.

5-7. Basic Positions about God

• Monotheism: Exactly one, uniquely ultimate, personal God.

• Pantheism: God \equiv the\,totality\,of\,the\,universe (all is divine).

• Panentheism: World is in God, yet God’s reality exceeds the world (world ⊂ God).

8. Two Models of God’s Nature

(a) Classical Theism

• God: timeless, immutable, impassible, simple.

• Creator ex nihilo, necessary being.

(b) Neo-theism / Open Theism / Theistic Personalism

• God everlasting in time, changes in relation to creatures, has real emotions, learns conditionals.

• Retains maximal greatness but re-reads perfection traits.

Fill-in Statements

(i) Classical: “we are in very significant ways unlike God; even in the ways we are like God, i.e., in being personal—beings that know, will, and love, we are radically below God.”
(ii) Neo-theism: “We begin by stressing likenesses—knowing, willing, loving. We are unlike God in that God is maximally powerful, knowledgeable, and good.”

9. ‘Person’ / ‘Personal’

• Metaphysical sense of ‘person’: a substantial center of consciousness/intellect/will.

• Personal (adjective): capable of deliberate knowledge, free choice, inter-subjective relation.

• Philosophical theology defaults to these metaphysical/functional senses, not to the strictly legal or anthropological ones.

10. Propositions A & B (Divine Attribute Packages)

(NB: instructor’s slides label these; reconstruction below)

• Proposition A (Classical set): God is eternal, immutable, impassible, omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good, simple.

• Proposition B (Neo-theistic amendments): God is everlasting (not timeless), mutable in relations, passible, experiences temporal succession.
  Fill-ins:
  (a) “With few exceptions, classical theists accept all the attributes in A.”
  (b) “Exception: process theists, who reject divine omnipotence and immutability while stressing creativity and relationality.”
  (c) “All neo-theists accept divine existence & perfect goodness but reject timelessness, strong immutability.”
  (d) “Most neo-theists accept omnipotence, but some deny different members of the omni-triad.”

11. Historical Classical Theists

• Pagan: Aristotle, Plotinus

• Jewish: Moses Maimonides, Philo of Alexandria

• Christian (recognize): Augustine, Aquinas

• Islamic: Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), Averroes (Ibn Rushd)

12-15. Key Doctrines & Arguments

• Uncaused existence (aseity): It is of God’s very essence/nature to exist → God differs utterly from contingent beings.
  • Argument considered: Anselmian / Ontological: God = that\,than\,which\,no\,greater\,can\,be\,conceived. Perfection entails necessary existence.

• Metaphysical Simplicity: God has no metaphysical parts (no matter/form, actuality/potentiality composition).
  • Argument: Any composite requires a prior cause. If God were composite, an external cause would explain the union → but God is first cause → hence simple.
  • Therefore, God is non-material and spaceless.

• Mixed vs. Unmixed perfections
  • Mixed perfection: good in one respect, deficient in another (e.g., courage, sensory perception).
  • Unmixed perfection: pure, admits of no defect (e.g., existence, knowledge, goodness, unity).

• Absolutely perfect being: A being possessing all unmixed perfections in the highest possible degree (maximal\,exemplification) and lacking every imperfection.

• Why only one God? Two absolutely perfect beings would differ—difference implies a perfection had by one and not the other → contradiction.

• Immutability:
  • Classical argument: change involves moving from potentiality to actuality; God is pure act.
  • Weinandy’s nuance: Unlike the inert rock, God’s immutability is living fullness—no deficiency to improve.

• Scriptural objection & 5-stage response (Maimonides/Aquinas): 1 Anthropomorphic language; 2 figurative predication; 3 God’s actions, not inner changes; 4 temporal effects vs. timeless cause; 5 proper analogical reading.

Ethics

20. Cheating

• Examples: copying exam answers, plagiarizing papers, unauthorized collaboration, using prohibited devices, fabricating data.

• Definition (slide 4): “Cheating is gaining or attempting to gain an academic advantage by dishonest or prohibited means.”

21-25. Explaining Moral Differences

• Creel’s four options: 1 Ethical Nihilism, 2 Individual Relativism, 3 Social Relativism, 4 Ethical Absolutism.

Ethical Nihilism

• No true moral facts or properties.

• Arguments: (i) Disagreement → no objective truth. (ii) Naturalistic explanation suffices (evolution).

• Rebuttal: Best-explanation inference—disagreement ≠ inexistence of truth; error theory inconsistent with moral experience.

Individual Relativism

• “X is right” means “I (speaker) approve of X.”

• Defense: Autonomy & sincerity.

• Problem: Tolerance becomes self-referential; endorses contradictory approvals.

• Counter-argument: Moral self-assessment becomes impossible (Hitler’s approval ⇒ right?).

Social Relativism

• “X is right” = “Society S approves of X.”

• Defense: Anthropological diversity.

• Objection: Reformers’ paradox (MLK wrong by definition).

Ethical Absolutism

• Some moral truths hold universally.

• Naïve variant: denies all moral complexity, ignores circumstances.

• Non-naïve: allows prima-facie duties, specification, proportionality.

• Professor’s abductive argument: Absolutism best explains moral progress, genuine disagreement, moral criticism of past societies, and the authority of moral language.

26-28. Classical Act Utilitarianism

• Principle: “An action is morally right iff it maximizes the net balance of pleasure over pain for all affected” (Greatest Happiness Principle, GHP).

• Consequentialism: moral status = function of consequences alone.

• Bentham: Quantitative hedonism; intensity, duration, propinquity, extent.
  \text{Utility} = \sum{i=1}^{n} (Pleasurei - Pain_i)

• Called radical altruism b/c agent’s good counts only as 1 among many.

• Motivation: Democratic/post-Enlightenment desire for measurable secular ethics.

• Critique emphasized: Justice/rights counter-examples (Frame‐Up, Organ Harvest, etc.).

29-32. Kantian Deontologism

• Primary principle (rough): “Act only on that maxim you can at the same time will as a universal law.”

• Non-consequentialism: rightness not solely based on outcomes.

• Kant: Motivation must be respect for the moral law; duty for duty’s sake.

• Categorical Imperative 1: Formula of Universal Law (FUL).
  “Act only on a maxim that you can will as a universal law.”

• Categorical Imperative 2: Formula of Humanity (FH).
  “Always treat humanity, in yourself and others, as an end in itself and never merely as a means.”

• Direct moral obligations apply to all rational agents/persons.

• Two problems:
  1 Rigidity/no exceptions.
  2 Maxim‐specification indeterminacy.

• Nazis-at-the-Door: Lying to save a life seems obligatory but violates FUL.

• Alternative account: lies wrong b/c violate trust-constitutive good of communication; can allow exceptions.

33. Aristotelian Virtue Ethics

• Morality = cultivation of virtues that constitute eudaimonia (flourishing).

• Moral virtue: stable habit disposing to act/feel rightly, \text{virtuous mean} between excess & defect.

• Four Cardinal Virtues:
  • Prudence (phronesis): right practical reason.
  • Justice: giving each their due.
  • Fortitude: endurance & courage in hardship.
  • Temperance: ordered desire for bodily pleasures.

• Moral particularism: judgment sensitive to contextual features; no algorithm.

• Not relativism: excellence is species-relative but objective.

• Best-explanation argument: matches moral psychology, role-model learning, developmental data, unity of life narrative.

Philosophy of Mind

34-40. Dualistic Interactionism (DI)

• Problem: relation of mind and body, mental causation, personal identity.

• Substance: independent bearer of properties.

• Substance Dualism: human person composed of an immaterial mind/soul + material body.
  • Simple SD: soul alone = person (body merely vehicle).
  • Compound SD: soul + body together = person.

• Interactionism: mental & physical states causally influence one another.

• Examples:
  • Simple DI: Plato (soul = sailor, body = ship).
  • Compound DI: Aquinas / Descartes revised (soul–body organism).

41-48. Classical Arguments for DI

• Descartes’ Indivisibility & Doubt Argument: I can doubt body, not mind → different substances.

• Personal Identity through Change: numerical self-continuity despite total physical replacement implies a persisting immaterial subject.

• Causal Interaction Problem: how can an immaterial cause transfer energy/momentum?

• Essence Argument: essence of mind = thought; essence of body = extension; cannot reduce.
  • Critique: category mistake in “essence.”

• Verificationist Objection (slides 45): cannot empirically describe non-physical → meaningless.
  • Problems: (i) self-referential incoherence; (ii) mathematical objects not empirically testable yet meaningful.

• Common Speech Argument: ordinary language treats agents as originators of acts independent of brain states.

• Brain Trauma Argument: neural damage impairs mentality; analogy: smashed radio. Counter‐analogy suggested: cloud → shadow (form-dependent).

• Unity of Cognizer: single subject integrates multi-modal stimuli—suggests a non-physical unifier.

49-56. Physicalist Alternatives

• Strong Physicalism: only physical substances/events; mental talk reducible

• Weak Physicalism: ontological physicalism + emergent properties (non-reducing)

• Identity Thesis (IT): each particular mental event M = identical to some brain event B

• Mental ≠ Physical Properties Argument: mental events have qualia, intentionality; brain events possess mass, charge—Leibniz’s Law ⇒ not identical

• Epiphenomenalism: mental events caused by physical states but have no causal efficacy
  • Defense: causal closure of physics + property dualism.
  • Problem: undermines knowledge of one’s own mind (how does epiphenomenal qualia inform report?)

• Comparison Table

  View	Weak Materialism?	Identity Thesis?	Mental Causation?
  DI	No	No	Yes
  Epiphenomenalism	Yes	No	No
  Physical Monism	Yes	Yes	Yes (physical level)

  • Correlation Thesis: stable one-to-one mapping \forall M\exists B : M \leftrightarrow B. Acceptable to all positions.

  • Bad Argument for IT: correlation ⇒ identity. Fallacy: correlation ≠ identity (e.g., barometer & pressure).

  • Last-Person Standing: eliminate non-physical causes → only physical remains → monism. Objection: elimination may mis-diagnose explanatory gap.

  • Personal Identity & Agency problems: purely physical continuity struggles with first-person unity and libertarian free will.

  61-72. Hylomorphism

  • Etymology: hyle (matter) + morphe (form).

  • Aristotle: substance = composite of form (actualizing principle) and matter (potentiality).

  • Axiom: No prime matter without substantial form; no substantial form without prime matter.

  • Paradigms: natural organisms.

  • Matter = quantitative constituents; Form = configuring principle that makes those constituents one living unity.

  • Two parts: (i) quantitative parts; (ii) metaphysical parts (form & matter).

  • Form explains unity & characteristic activities; prime matter explains capacity for change.

  • Souls: technical name for substantial forms of living things.
    • Plants: “vegetative soul” ⇒ nutrition, growth, reproduction.
    • Non-rational animals: “sensitive soul” ⇒ plus perception & locomotion.
    • Humans: “rational soul” ⇒ plus intellect & will.

  • Analogy motivating agency: just as hand (part) does not grasp, but person grasps through the hand, so intellect (formal power) does not think alone, but whole human thinks through intellect.

  73-77. Survival & Advantages

  • Aquinas: intellectual operations are immaterial (unlimited by bodily organ) → soul subsists post-mortem.

  • Does not deny existence of atoms etc.; rather ontological status of lower-level parts is derivative within organism.

  • Cartesian Assumption (Matter): material substance = pure extension. Accepted by dualists & physicalists, rejected by hylomorphists.

  • Cartesian Assumption (Mind): mental events = non-extended, private, wholly intransitive. Hylomorphists say mental acts are embodied formal acts of a whole substance.

  • Argument for Hylomorphism (sketch):
    1 We need a theory that simultaneously does justice to (i) qualitative consciousness, (ii) unity of subject, (iii) causal efficacy of mental acts, (iv) dependence of mind on brain, (v) personal identity through change, (vi) libertarian freedom, (vii) mental causation of bodily acts.
    2 Hylomorphism best satisfies all seven better than DI (fails interaction physics), epiphenomenalism (fails mental causation), physical monism (fails qualia & freedom), eliminative materialism (denies data).
    3 Therefore, ceteris paribus prefer hylomorphism.

  Numerical / Formal References

  • Greatest Happiness Principle (Utilitarianism): \text{Right}(A) \iff \forall A' \in \text{Alternatives}, U(A) \ge U(A').

  • Bentham’s Hedonic calculus: U = \sum{k=1}^{n} (Ik \times Dk \times Pk \times F_k) where I=intensity, D=duration, P=probability, F=fecundity, etc.

  • Leibniz’s Law (Indiscernibility of Identicals): (x=y) \rightarrow \forall P\,(P(x) \leftrightarrow P(y)).

  • Ontological Necessity: \Box\exists x\,(x = God).

  Cross-Connections & Implications

  • Ethical theory intertwines with philosophy of mind via questions of agency and free will.

  • Divine attributes debate informs practical ethics (e.g., divine command vs. independent standards).

  • Hylomorphic account offers middle path reconciling scientific neuroscience (physical dependence) and first-person phenomenology (formal powers).

  • Epistemological caution: arguments often hinge on whether metaphysical parsimony outweighs explanatory adequacy.