Apr 3, 2018 02:02 AM
(This post was last modified: Apr 3, 2018 02:17 AM by C C.)
http://www.whatisitliketobeaphilosopher....an-miller/
EXCERPT: In this interview, Christian B. Miller, A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy, talks about growing up in Florida, playing Nintendo, rescuing baby sea turtles, giving a speech at the UN, dabbling in pragmatism, Rorty, Cornel West, posing and posturing, being blown away after reading After Virtue, predestination and divine command theory, being steered away from doing a dissertation on philosophy of religion, working with Audi, Velleman, 9/11, job market prep, how his family changed his work habits, John Doris and situationism, the limits of the philosophical and psychological study of morality, the Templeton Foundation and the Character Project, Pol Pot, Harriet Tubman, Ted Bundy, Jesus, David Lewis, Dinotrux, The Usual Suspects, U2, and his last meal…
[...]
Do your religious views inform your philosophical views? Do your philosophical views influence your religious views?
They do. And, incidentally, I think everyone’s religious views (where this includes being an agnostic or atheist) informs his or her philosophical views, at least in the sense of opening and closing certain positions from serious consideration. Consider atheism and divine command theory, for instance. Or atheism and Reformed epistemology.
One example of how my religious views inform my philosophical views is in meta-ethics. There I take seriously views which ground deontological moral properties in God’s will (so divine will theories, not divine command theories). I have written several papers trying to think through such an approach.
Of course there are many views I hold in philosophy that don’t seem to be informed by my religious views. For instance, I am confident I would still reject the Humean theory of motivation, motivational internalism, internalist views about normative reasons, identification approaches to agency, various formulations of moral realism, and so forth even if I suddenly became an atheist.
As far as my philosophical views informing my religious views, one example is that I have incompatibilist leanings about free will, which makes it hard for to accept certain views about predestination, election, and divine determinism....
MORE: http://www.whatisitliketobeaphilosopher....an-miller/
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https://philosophynow.org/issues/99/Simon_Blackburn
EXCERPT: Simon Blackburn is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, a member of the Humanist Philosophers’ Group, a former Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and currently a Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Rick Lewis asks him about his atheism.
Hello Professor Blackburn. You are an atheist. What do you personally mean by ‘atheism’?
Actually I prefer the label ‘infidel’ to that of ‘atheist’. I suppose an atheist thinks there is a definite, intelligible question to which the answer is ‘no’, and agnostics also think there is such a question, and that the right answer is ‘don’t know’. But I doubt that there is a definite intelligible question about ‘the existence of God’.
How did you become an infidel?
I am not sure I ever had any faith to lose, so I can’t identify a definite, dated process. I was at a Church of England school, but gradually became less and less interested in the Church’s sayings and doctrines. At about the age of sixteen I read Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian, and never looked back.
Is it possible to disprove the existence of God? And if not, shouldn’t you be an agnostic?
Being an infidel, that is, just having no faith, I do not have to prove anything. I have no faith in the Loch Ness Monster, but do not go about trying to prove that it does not exist, although there are certainly overwhelming arguments that it does not. And at least there is a fairly determinate meaning attached to the idea that there is one.
[...]
Some theologians have followed the late John Hick in suggesting that religious claims aren’t really about asserting the truth of propositions such as ‘God exists’, but instead are claims about perceptions of God; in other words theism is about an attitude towards the world. Do you think something parallel could be said about some atheists?
I have a great deal of respect for the view that ‘onto-theology’, that is, religious doctrines associated with existence claims, should be abandoned, but that such things as rituals, poetry, metaphor, music and dance still have a role in welding people together into a congregation or a society. This was Durkheim’s view of the function of religious practices. I think they have other functions as well, but that substantially he was right. Of course, on this view the whole subject changes, and the question turns to the value of these practices as they manifest themselves in particular historical and cultural contexts. You can very effectively weld people together by magnifying their differences from other people, and that has always been an aspect of religion, and not at all a nice one.
Marx is admired by militant New Atheists for saying that religion is the opium of the people. But they forget what he said next, which is that “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.” I think that is right, which is why moral and political questions should occupy all of us far more than ontological questions...
MORE: https://philosophynow.org/issues/99/Simon_Blackburn
EXCERPT: In this interview, Christian B. Miller, A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy, talks about growing up in Florida, playing Nintendo, rescuing baby sea turtles, giving a speech at the UN, dabbling in pragmatism, Rorty, Cornel West, posing and posturing, being blown away after reading After Virtue, predestination and divine command theory, being steered away from doing a dissertation on philosophy of religion, working with Audi, Velleman, 9/11, job market prep, how his family changed his work habits, John Doris and situationism, the limits of the philosophical and psychological study of morality, the Templeton Foundation and the Character Project, Pol Pot, Harriet Tubman, Ted Bundy, Jesus, David Lewis, Dinotrux, The Usual Suspects, U2, and his last meal…
[...]
Do your religious views inform your philosophical views? Do your philosophical views influence your religious views?
They do. And, incidentally, I think everyone’s religious views (where this includes being an agnostic or atheist) informs his or her philosophical views, at least in the sense of opening and closing certain positions from serious consideration. Consider atheism and divine command theory, for instance. Or atheism and Reformed epistemology.
One example of how my religious views inform my philosophical views is in meta-ethics. There I take seriously views which ground deontological moral properties in God’s will (so divine will theories, not divine command theories). I have written several papers trying to think through such an approach.
Of course there are many views I hold in philosophy that don’t seem to be informed by my religious views. For instance, I am confident I would still reject the Humean theory of motivation, motivational internalism, internalist views about normative reasons, identification approaches to agency, various formulations of moral realism, and so forth even if I suddenly became an atheist.
As far as my philosophical views informing my religious views, one example is that I have incompatibilist leanings about free will, which makes it hard for to accept certain views about predestination, election, and divine determinism....
MORE: http://www.whatisitliketobeaphilosopher....an-miller/
- - -
https://philosophynow.org/issues/99/Simon_Blackburn
EXCERPT: Simon Blackburn is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, a member of the Humanist Philosophers’ Group, a former Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and currently a Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Rick Lewis asks him about his atheism.
Hello Professor Blackburn. You are an atheist. What do you personally mean by ‘atheism’?
Actually I prefer the label ‘infidel’ to that of ‘atheist’. I suppose an atheist thinks there is a definite, intelligible question to which the answer is ‘no’, and agnostics also think there is such a question, and that the right answer is ‘don’t know’. But I doubt that there is a definite intelligible question about ‘the existence of God’.
How did you become an infidel?
I am not sure I ever had any faith to lose, so I can’t identify a definite, dated process. I was at a Church of England school, but gradually became less and less interested in the Church’s sayings and doctrines. At about the age of sixteen I read Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian, and never looked back.
Is it possible to disprove the existence of God? And if not, shouldn’t you be an agnostic?
Being an infidel, that is, just having no faith, I do not have to prove anything. I have no faith in the Loch Ness Monster, but do not go about trying to prove that it does not exist, although there are certainly overwhelming arguments that it does not. And at least there is a fairly determinate meaning attached to the idea that there is one.
[...]
Some theologians have followed the late John Hick in suggesting that religious claims aren’t really about asserting the truth of propositions such as ‘God exists’, but instead are claims about perceptions of God; in other words theism is about an attitude towards the world. Do you think something parallel could be said about some atheists?
I have a great deal of respect for the view that ‘onto-theology’, that is, religious doctrines associated with existence claims, should be abandoned, but that such things as rituals, poetry, metaphor, music and dance still have a role in welding people together into a congregation or a society. This was Durkheim’s view of the function of religious practices. I think they have other functions as well, but that substantially he was right. Of course, on this view the whole subject changes, and the question turns to the value of these practices as they manifest themselves in particular historical and cultural contexts. You can very effectively weld people together by magnifying their differences from other people, and that has always been an aspect of religion, and not at all a nice one.
Marx is admired by militant New Atheists for saying that religion is the opium of the people. But they forget what he said next, which is that “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.” I think that is right, which is why moral and political questions should occupy all of us far more than ontological questions...
MORE: https://philosophynow.org/issues/99/Simon_Blackburn