Michael Rea

Supernaturalism is a research programme wherein one takes at least the methods of the natural sciences and religious experience as basic sources of evidence. Argues that embracing supernaturalism offers our best hope of avoiding the consequences of naturalism described earlier in the book. However, the author also argues that not just any version of supernaturalism will do the job, but only those that give rise to evidence for the conclusion that our world and, in particular, our cognitive faculties are the products of intelligent design.

Some philosophers think that the presupposition that there are intrinsic modal properties can be justified on pragmatic grounds; and some also think that, in light of this presupposition, we are justified in thinking that the properties that science takes as definitive of various natural kinds are essential to the things that have them. Argues that this way of explaining how we might be justified in attributing particular intrinsic modal properties to material objects is unsuccessful. Even if it is true that we have pragmatic justification for believing in intrinsic modal properties, it does not follow that we have epistemic justification for believing in them. The author goes on to note that, though one might argue for the conclusion that, for naturalists anyway, pragmatic considerations do confer epistemic justification upon our beliefs, the argument will be cogent only under theistic or anti‐realist assumptions. Theism is an unwelcome alternative for most naturalists; and to concede that naturalists must be anti‐realists is to concede one of the main conclusions that the author aims to defend.

Begins the defense of the conclusion that the characterization of naturalism that is most faithful to the tradition, and the one that best explains both the similarities and the differences one finds among contemporary naturalists, is one which takes naturalism to be not a view but a research programme. Provides a brief discussion of the pre‐history of naturalism, together with a more extended discussion of the relevant views of naturalism's two main spokesmen in the twentieth century – John Dewey and W. V. Quine. The purpose of this chapter is to give the reader a clear perspective on the core dispositions underlying the naturalistic tradition.

In an earlier chapter, the author argues that naturalists can justifiably accept realism about material objects only if the methods of science justify belief in intrinsic modal properties. One suggestion as to how they might do this is as follows: beliefs attributing intrinsic modal properties to material objects are justified because their truth provides a good explanation for the existence of proper functions in nature. This examines this suggestion and argues that, except in the case of objects that are the products of design, proper functions are not empirically detectable.

Introduces several of the concepts and assumptions that will occupy center stage in the book's main argument. In particular, introduces the notion of a research programme, and provides characterizations of realism about material objects and its rival, constructivism. Also defends the conclusion that it is impossible to adopt a research programme on the basis of evidence. This constitutes the author's argument for the conditional claim that if naturalism is a research programme, its status as orthodoxy is without rational foundation. Introduces the central thesis of the book – that naturalists are committed to rejecting realism about material objects, materialism, and perhaps realism about other minds – and goes on to provide a brief outline of the remaining chapters.

Begins the third part of the book, in which the author discusses two important alternatives to naturalism. The alternative that is discussed is intuitionism, a research programme that takes the methods of natural science and rational intuition, but nothing else, as basic sources of evidence. Argues that, unless one has intuitions that support the view that our world is the product of intelligent design, intuitionism is self‐defeating. Also argues that, though there might be empirical reason for thinking that intuition is reliable in some domains, this fact does not save intuitionism from self‐defeat, nor is it of any use to a naturalist in trying to avoid the ontological consequences described in earlier chapters of the book.

Many of the doctrines central to Christianity have important philosophical implications or presuppositions. In this article, we begin with a brief general discussion of the relationship between philosophy and Christian dogma, and then we turn our attention to three of the most philosophically challenging Christian doctrines: the trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement. We take these three as our focus because, unlike (for example) doctrines about providence or the attributes of God, these are distinctive to Christian theology and, unlike (for example) the doctrine of original sin or the Real Presence of Christ in the eucharist, these have been the subject of a great deal of discussion over the past couple of decades.

Adherents of the Abrahamic religions have traditionally held that God is morally perfect and unconditionally deserving of devotion, obedience, love, and worship. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures tell us that God is compassionate, merciful, and just. As is well-known, however, these same scriptures contain passages that portray God as wrathful, severely punitive, and jealous. Critics furthermore argue that the God of these scriptures commends bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia, condones slavery, and demands the adoption of unjust laws-for example, laws that mandate the death penalty for adultery and rebellion against parents, and laws institutionalizing in various ways the diverse kinds of bigotry and oppression just mentioned. In recent days, these sorts of criticisms of the Hebrew Bible have been raised in new and forceful ways by philosophers, scientists, social commentators, and others. This volume brings together eleven original essays representing the views of both critics and defenders of the character of God as portrayed in these texts. Authors represent the disciplines of philosophy, religion, and Biblical studies. Each essay is accompanied by comments from another author who takes a critical approach to the thesis defended in that essay, along with replies by the essay's author.

Mereological Universalism is the thesis that, for any disjoint Xs, the Xs automatically compose something. In his book, Material Beings, Peter van Inwagen provides an argument against Universalism that relies on the following crucial premiss: (F) If Universalism is true, then the Xs cannot ever compose two objects, either simultaneously or successively.1 I have argued elsewhere (Rea 1998) that van Inwagen’s defence of (F) fails because it relies on the false assumption that Universalism is incompatible with the view that, for some Xs, what the Xs compose depends upon how the Xs are arranged. However, Matthew McGrath (1998) has recently provided a new – and in his opinion, better – formulation of van Inwagen’s argument for (F). Furthermore, he claims (contrary to what van Inwagen himself apparently thinks) that four of the ten assumptions listed at the outset of Material Beings are ‘jointly sufficient for the falsity of Universalism’. (1998: 121) Those assumptions, as they appear on page 121 of McGrath 1998, are as follows.

Over the past three decades there has been a great deal of philosophical interest in puzzles about composition and identity over time. Familiar examples include the "Ship of Theseus" puzzle, the "Paradox of Increase", and the "Body-minus" puzzle. The metaphysical importance of these puzzles is hard to overemphasize; their solutions have ramifications for our views about personal identity, de re modality, the mind-body problem, and a host of other ontological issues. Surprisingly, however, no one has discussed how all of these puzzles, and their solutions, are interrelated. I argue that there is one problem underlying these puzzles. I call it the "problem of material constitution". I give, for the first time, a precise statement of this problem, I show how every solution to it is equally a solution to each of the puzzles that raise it, and I defend what I take to be its most plausible solution. ;The problem arises whenever it appears that an object a and an object b share all of the same parts and yet are essentially related to those parts in different ways. This kind of situation is paradoxical because the fact that a and b have all of the same parts suggests that a is identical with b, but the fact that they are essentially related to their parts in different ways suggests that a is distinct from b. I argue that there are only three ways to solve the problem: reject the thesis that, for any x and y, if x and y share all of the same parts then x is identical with y, reject the thesis that if x is identical with y then x is necessarily identical with y, or reject some feature of the story that raises the problem . I defend the third alternative

In World Without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism, I argued that there is an important sense in which naturalism’s current status as methodological orthodoxy is without rational foundation, and I argued that naturalists must give up two views that many of them are inclined to hold dear—realism about material objects and materialism. In a review recently published in Faith and Philosophy, Dale Jacquette alleges that my arguments in World Without Design are directed mainly against strawmen and that I have neglected to discuss at least one formulation of naturalism that straightforwardly addresses my main objections. In this reply, I show that these and other objections raised by Jacquette are unsound and, in fact, rest on egregious misrepresentations of the book.

The question raised by this volume is “How successful is naturalism?” The question presupposes that we already know what naturalism is and what counts as success. But, as anyone familiar with the literature on naturalism knows, both suppositions are suspect. To answer the question, then, we must first say what we mean in this context by both ‘naturalism’ and ‘success’. I’ll start with ‘success’. I will then argue that, by the standard of measurement that I shall identify here, naturalism is an utter failure.

In this paper I provide a metaphysical account of the incarnation that starts from substantive assumptions about the nature of natures and about the metaphysics of the Trinity and develops in light of these a story about the relations among the elements involved in the incarnation. Central to the view I will describe are two features of Aristotle's metaphysics, though I do not claim that my own development of these ideas is anything of which Aristotle himself would have approved: (i) a hylomorphic understanding of material objects; (ii) a doctrine of numerical sameness without identity; and (iii) the view that the nature of a thing can appropriately be identified with its form. These ideas, along with other important aspects of the metaphysical framework with which I shall be working, are laid out in the first five sections below, followed in the sixth section by a brief sketch of the account of the Trinity that Jeff Brower and I have presented in detail elsewhere. In the final section, I present my account of the incarnation.

In this paper, I present an Aristotelian solution to the problem of material constitution. The problem of material constitution arises whenever it appears that an object a and an object b share all of the same parts and yet are essentially related to their parts in different ways. (A familiar example: A lump of bronze constitutes a statue of Athena. The lump and the statue share all of the same parts, but it appears that the lump can, whereas the statue cannot, survive radical rearrangements of those parts.) I argue that if we are prepared to follow Aristotle in making a distinction between numerical sameness and identity, we can solve the problem of material constitution without recourse to co-location or contingent identity and without repudiating any of the familiar objects of common sense (such as lumps and statues) or denying that these objects have the essential properties we ordinarily think that they have.

Classical Christian orthodoxy insists that God is Triune: there is only one God, but there are three divine Persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — who are somehow of one substance with one another. But what does this doctrine mean? How can we coherently believe that there is only one God if we also believe that there are three divine Persons? This problem, sometimes called the ‘threeness-oneness problem’ or the ‘logical problem of the Trinity’, is the focus of this interdisciplinary volume. It includes a selection of recent philosophical work on this topic, accompanied by a variety of essays by philosophers and theologians to further the discussion. The book is divided into four parts, the first three dealing in turn with the three most prominent models for understanding the relations between the Persons of the Trinity: Social Trinitarianism, Latin Trinitarianism, and Relative Trinitarianism. Each section includes essays by both proponents and critics of the relevant model. The volume concludes with a section containing essays by theologians reflecting on the current state of the debate.

In "Persons and Bodies," Lynne Baker defends what she calls the "Constitution View" of human persons, according to which (a) human persons are constituted by their bodies, and (b) constitution is an asymmetric, nontransitive relation that is somehow "intermediate between identity and separate existence". (Baker 2000: 29) Thesis (a), or something like it, is precisely what we would expect from someone who believes that persons and bodies both are material objects. But thesis (b) is distinctive. Materialists who treat constitution as identity arrive at the view that human persons are identical with their bodies, their brains, or some other material object in the vicinity of their heads. At the other extreme, materialists who treat constitution as nothing more than complete overlap without identity arrive at a simple coincidence theory of the relation between persons and bodies (or brains, or whatever). Baker's view is supposed to stake out a novel account of the nature of constitution.

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion provides a broad overview of the topics which are at the forefront of discussion in contemporary philosophy of religion. Prominent views and arguments from both historical and contemporary authors are discussed and analyzed. The book treats all of the central topics in the field, including the coherence of the divine attributes, theistic and atheistic arguments, faith and reason, religion and ethics, miracles, human freedom and divine providence, science and religion, and immortality. In addition it addresses topics of significant importance that similar books often ignore, including the argument for atheism from hiddenness, the coherence of the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and the relationship between religion and politics. It will be a valuable accompaniment to undergraduate and introductory graduate-level courses.

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity poses a serious philosophical problem. On the one hand, it seems to imply that there is exactly one divine being; on the other hand, it seems to imply that there are three. There is another well-known philosophical problem that presents us with a similar sort of tension: the problem of material constitution. We argue in this paper that a relatively neglected solution to the problem of material constitution can be developed into a novel solution to the problem of the Trinity.

In debate about the nature of persistence over time, the view that material objects endure has played the role of "champion" and the view that they perdure has played the role of the "challenger." It has fallen to the perdurantists rather than the endurantists to motivate their view, to provide reasons for accepting it that override whatever initial presumption there is against it. Perdurantists have sought to discharge their burden in several ways. For example, perdurantism has been recommend on the grounds that: (i) it solves several of the puzzles that raise the problem of material constitution; (ii) it is (at least) suggested by the special theory of relativity (hereafter "SR"); (iii) it is the only view that makes sense out of the possibility of intrinsic change; (iv) it is the only view consistent with the doctrine of Humean supervenience; and (v) it makes better sense than its competitor out of the possibility of fission. There are primary and most powerful claims that have been made on behalf of perdurantism. They are individually persuasive and together they constitute a formidable assault upon the hegemony of endurantism. Endurantists of course, have not been without reply. However, since endurantists typically respond to these claims one at a time and in different ways, it is easy to get the impression that perdurantism offers a single, neat solution to a host of problems whereas endurantism requires a patchwork of different strategies. But this impression is an illusion. In Rea 1995, I argued that though perdurantism does solve some of the puzzles that raise the problem of material constitution, it does not solve the problem of material constitution itself. Thus, the problem of material constitution really has no bearing on the debate between endurantists and perdurantists. In his paper, I will show that the same is true with respect to SR, the problem of intrinsic change, the doctrine of Humean supervenience, and the possibility of fission. In short, I will argue that none of (ii-v) is true and that therefore the doctrine of temporal parts stands unmotivated.