More highlights from philosophy classes past

Yesterday afternoon, Chad Meister and I had our bi-annual debate in his Metaphysics class about God's foreknowledge and our freedom. It started six years when I wrote a response to a page that he had written that was inspired by Minority Report. Essentially I claimed that there is a distinction to be made between God (or pre-cogs, or MacBeth's witches) foretelling an action that is made with significant emotional involvement (like denying Christ three times or shooting the supposed abductor of my son) and some perfectly mundane, free choice.

So I composed a thought experiment in which I stop at Krogers and buy ice cream on my way home, having to make a choice between the vanilla and the mint chocolate chip (each of which I like equally well). But then suppose that God made a video of that future choice appear on my computer before I left work for the grocery store. I claim that revealing that to me would be enough for me to want to choose oppositely to what is on the video when I actually get to Krogers. Meister claims, then, that that is a flat out contradiction because the video shows what will happen, and so I couldn't choose otherwise (though he still claims it to be a free choice). Then I fall back on some Back to the Future-inspired space-time continuum gobbledy-gook about it being a different future than the one shown on the video tape (which was not a picture of the "me" that had knowledge of the video tape). And so it goes to where I say that God knows the future and we have free will, so long as he keeps his knowledge of our future free choices to himself. That's where the discussion has ended the last three times.

This time, however, I think we made some progress (or at least advanced the discussion a bit more). Meister's strong intuitions are that I cannot do otherwise than I will do. And I'm happy enough to affirm that, but I fear there is a problem when what I "will" do is revealed to me. Because that in some sense "fixes" the future. And my strong intuition is that I can still do otherwise when I get to that future choice if I really do have free will.

So I feel that there is a linguistic problem with our analysis. For Meister asks (with the law of non-contradiction lurking close by), "Is it possible for you to do otherwise than what you will do?" I want to claim that that is an incorrect verb tense and that we don't have a verb tense that works here. For in some sense it is like asking about an action that is already done, "could you have done otherwise?" to which we say "yes, but I didn't and can't undo it now." But that doesn't really work for that future action... I think I can "undo" my future free choice because it hasn't happened yet. Thus the video is not really of the actual future (or it is set).

And then I have to claim that there is a perspectival thing going on here, because it is my knowledge of my future free actions that causes the problem. I'm happy to affirm that God can know about them through simple foreknowledge without that causing the space-time continuum dilemma.

Someday I might try to write this more coherently...

"It's simple symbolic logic, captain"

Because I'm kissing administration goodbye but still wanting a regular paycheck of some sort, they need to find something productive for me to do around here. For next fall that will include teaching Symbolic Logic.

Because this blog seems to get more reading as a Facebook note that appears there through the miracle of electronic wizardry, I'm hoping that a small commercial for the course might hit an appropriately targeted audience there of potential PHIL301 students. Also, at the joint Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics class last week with Taliaferro, there was some concern being propagated about Symbolic Logic being a difficult class; I thought I should address this concern as well.

I try to sell the course as a rigorous set of calisthenics for your minds. It is rarely the case that anyone taking it really needs to learn the symbols of first-order predicate logic for utilitarian reasons; but learning to use those symbols trains you to think in a certain way, and learning to think in that way is advantageous to just about anything you do in life (I'm not completely thrilled that I've fallen back on a utilitarian argument of sorts after all, but there it is).

In the interest of full disclosure, I always start my courses by reading some of the student evaluation comments from others who have taken the course from me. I'll give some of that here in order to get the buzz going. These are actual comments from actual people (which contrasts with what you'll get from Prenkert!! (though I'm not unaware that I'm still constructing my own narrative here)). Here is a fair representative sample of what students have said about the class over the last four times I've taught it:

"This class is very challenging. The content is difficult, but Stump is very good at making sure that students are understanding. I find this class interesting and "fun", at least, as fun as it could be. This was a very welcome breath of fresh air as far as difficulty is concerned."

Sometimes I felt as if I were sure to drown like a Viking Child thrown into the water of symbolic logic. Dr. Stump is a very good professor and this class was taught as well as any course I have taken. The class is hard for certain, but it has undoubtedly improved my thinking skills.

"This is the hardest class I've taken in my four years at Bethel.
I've never worked so hard in a class and not done as well as I would have
liked. The one redeeming quality of the class is that Stump teaches it,
but even that has failed to make the class bearable. This is not really
Stump's fault I guess. I just really hate and don't understand the content
of the course. It would be nice if Stump was more accessible--he's too
busy being an important Vice President--again I guess there's not much that can be done about that."

"Pensees are a definite plus--we miss them when they're gone. After
the Friday with the singing, the class has been way too relaxed and
lenient. Before, it was taken more seriously and I learned more."

"Good class; too picky on tests; doesn't give me points back when I whine;
it's better than Greek class; allegiance of professor to Red Sox is
unacceptable."

"I enjoyed this class, you did a good job ob of making foreign concepts
understandable. I came in with no logic experience and having no math
since my freshman year, but again you helped make it understandable. The
course was just difficult enough."

As to the difficulty of the course, the overall GPA of the grades I've given for the last several courses is higher than the average GPA of our student body. So, I'll spin that data to say, if everyone would take this class, our overall GPA would go up!!

I look forward to having you in class next fall.

Signs and Wonders

Les Beauchamp is back in the house at Bethel this week. He has been a Spiritual Emphasis Week speaker four times over the past twenty years, and it just so happens that they have coincided perfectly with the times that I have been a part of the community. I'm not entirely certain of this, but I think that I have been to every one of the chapels he's spoken at (which would be 29 of them counting today's). There's something about him...



I convinced my son Casey to come with me tonight to see the service. On the way there I told him that it felt to me like it must have felt in the Bible days when John the Baptist was around (I won't go so far as to compare him to Jesus) when some father said to his son, "you've got to see this crazy preacher out by the river. Let's go out and see what happens."



I guess part of the draw is that the supernatural follows Les around. He used this phrase tonight that comes from Celtic Christianity: thin. "Thin" was used to describe places where the boundary between the natural and the supernatural is very thin--where the two pass over into each other. It's not the kooky TV preacher kind of stuff; but you get the sense that it is authentic Holy Spirit activity that we too rarely experience.



Everyone wants a sign. We'd all like to see a show. I guess there's some connection to my previous posts here. What role does the Spirit play today? I live in a pretty rational world.

Signs, signs, everywhere a sign

The good Dr. Haas took some exception to my recent post on coincidences as signs of God. He left a series of posts on my Facebook page into which this blog dumps (found here if you have access). I take it that the gist of his concern is that interpreting circumstances as messages from God is an inherently private action, and so removes the controls of a believing community centered on the Word of God and opens the door to all kinds of wacky things which are immune to falsification.

I continue to wonder, though, whether the kinds of experiences I alluded to have some legitimate place in the life of faith. Remember first of all that it's a pretty rare occurrence in my life that something dramatic like this happens (in a life approaching four decades, I'm still counting them on fingers (with several leftover)). Next, most of these incidents were not remarkable in their immediate contexts (with the exception of the radio song I mentioned), but have become more so as larger stories of my life unfolded. The historian will have fun with this, I'm sure: they are the interpreted "facts" (and I'm not sure there are any other kind) around which I've made sense out of some of the things that have happened to me and the choices that I've made. I'll continue to contend that my faith has a role to play in this. I believe in, trust in, and am committed to (these three attitudes classically constituting faith) seeing the hand of God at work in my life. This is always easier in retrospect and (I'm willing to concede) in community.

You'll not catch me claiming infallibility with such things, but I think it defensible that God does work through circumstances and impinge on the natural order of things. I think we can learn to hear his voice (though we need to be careful here not to think God just dictates to us what we should do in certain situations--thus rendering free will superfluous). These are components of my faith in the kind of being that God is.

Such a topic could hardly be treated with integrity without appeal to the Five Man Electrical Band classic:

"Whoaaaa signs, signs, everywhere a sign;
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind.
Do this, don't do that. Can't you read the signs?

Play ball!

There is still snow in piles in northern Indiana, but they're playing baseball in Japan. My family and I arose at 6am local time today to see the season opener for Major League Baseball which featured my beloved Red Sox beating the Oakland A's in extra innings in the Tokyo Dome. Evidently this is part of some marketing scheme to bring in more international dollars to MLB.

I have to admit that it seems a bit early for baseball to be going entering the official season. And I haven't decided yet how devoted of a fan I'm going to be this summer (though I'm not sure that we are always the agents of such decisions... more often we find ourselves engaged at various levels apart from any intentional choice). On the one hand, I won't be administrating any more this summer (which means I won't have to put on long pants every day and go to work), so there should be some time to devote to sport. But on the other hand, a writing deadline looms pretty large at the end of the summer, and there's not much of a margin for tomfoolery.

I'm also anxious to see how the whole world-champions-twice-in-four-years thing fits with being a Red Sox fan. Winning the World Series once was the incredible and unbelievable climax to the collective suffering of generations. But now it's almost old hat. The DNA of Red Sox Nation is changing. I haven't decided yet if I like it. It makes me feel pretentious... almost like a Yankee fan.

See you tomorrow morning at 6am for game two.

Resurrection musings

Another Easter is in the history books. It is probably a little anti-climactic to discuss Easter after the fact (kind of like the Easter egg hunt that took place on Bethel's campus today). But I've never claimed to be ahead of the curve.

The resurrection of the body is an interesting topic to plumb. We quite often assume that it is the actual physical body itself that becomes re-animated at the resurrection. Certainly in the instance of Jesus's resurrection, there was no more body in the tomb (note the empty burial cloth in the photo).

We want there to be a connection between our physical bodies now and the resurrected bodies that are to come. Must there be? If not, then Jesus's "body" could have still been in the tomb when he was resurrected. But it gets complicated when we deal with others.

What about the resurrection of those who have been dead for thousands of years? There aren't many particles of their bodies left to animate. And a question that some Christians have given serious consideration to is: what if a guy fell overboard into the sea and was eaten by a fish; thus his body was incorporated into the fish's. Then someone else caught the fish and ate it, thus incorporating that flesh into his. At the resurrection, whose flesh will go to which resurrected person??

It seems to me that there is some sort of continuity. For instance, at the Transfiguration Jesus's regular body was transformed into the glorious one (the soma pneumatika?). It's not like his regular flesh was there too. But how do you maintain a continuity like that when all the material particles have disintegrated from the body?

VP No More

One of the nice things about taking six months off from blogging is that you have a lot of topics waiting in the wings to be blogged. One of the categories I'll be interspersing here is "Catch up on my life" Probably the most momentous thing that has transpired during this time period is my decision to step down from my administrative post at Bethel. At the close of this academic year, I'll no longer be the Vice President for Academic Services.

I still have some major reflecting to do on this move. Coming to the decision was tortuous, but even if nothing else good comes from it, it was a worthwhile process because I heard from God. I suspect that most of us have times fairly frequently when there is a nudge or quiet word in our lives that provides direction. But I have a list that I can count on my fingers of the times when there was something more dramatic in the way of divine communication. I've never been one to hear audible voices or see skywriting; but God has worked powerfully and unmistakeably (at least to my lights) through circumstances--like the time that I asked if I was going to marry the girl I was dating and God "answered" through the song on the radio. This time it was through the timing of a telephone call. Perhaps I'll speak to it again in the future.

For now, I'll reflect a bit more on coincidences. There is a concept that has some traction from the Intelligent Design movement called "specified complexity". Essentially it is an event that has a very low probability of happening (complexity) AND shows unmistakable signs of intelligence (specified). When I lived in Illinois, the license plates had three letters then three numbers to them (unless you ordered a custom one--which was free in IL at that time but I chose not to do for aesthetic reasons). The one that we got was RCF 337. Getting that specific license number has a probability of 1 in 17,576,000. That's pretty rare, but I when we got it in the mail I didn't respond with, "Wow, can you believe we got that one??!!" However, if I had gotten JBS 711, which has exactly the same probability of appearing on an Illinois license plate, I would have been incredibly shocked and I doubt if you could have convinced me that something wasn't fishy somewhere (because that happens to be my initials and birth date).

In the same way, many of the "God things" that have happened to me had incredibly low probabilities as well as having the unmistakeable mark of someone standing behind them. I'm aware of the possibility that they could have just been random; but I choose to view those events as purposeful (and would argue that it is the better explanation of the facts to do so). I think that being committed to viewing the world in such a way is at least part of what it means to have religious faith.

It's all about me

I'm back from a half-year blogging hiatus. I have enjoyed the break and feel that all jobs should come with six-month vacations. I'm a little nervous, to be honest. I've fallen out of rhythm. I feel like I don't what's going on out there in the blogodrome. I wonder if anyone will come back after my desertion.

An unrelated story:
For a year in Sierra Leone I taught five boys all subjects that 7th and 8th graders are supposed to learn. One day I got so frustrated with the egocentrism that permeated their conversations, that I banned the use of all first-person pronouns and kept score on the board for any violations of the rule. One kid kept using them on purpose and it made me angry.

My Blogging Summer

This is my 87th blogging entry (though there are a handful of those still in unpublished draft version), reaching back to April 27th with this post. With the passing of Labor Day, it feels like the summer is officially over, and as I reflect on the themes in my life during this period, blogging is definitely one of the noteworthy ones.

But now it is time to take stock of the priorities for the fall semester, and I'm afraid that blogging is not going to be very high on the list. I have thoroughly enjoyed it for a season, and am not going to completely remove myself from the blogosphere. But I'm not going to be very regular at it for the immediate future. There are too many other demands on my time right now and I need to be a good steward in that area of life.

I've discovered that blogging well is pretty significant commitment. It is not merely the time to write things down, but there is the time spent reading other blogs, and (perhaps more significantly) the mental commitment to blogging in the sense that it is one of the projects that never ends and competes with the other things in life.

Lest I end on a downer, I'd like to note the things about blogging that I see as positive:

1. I love the medium of language. Others paint or play music or blend media together in movies or what have you; I like straight language. It is remarkable to me that a certain pattern of ink splotches on a page, illuminated pixels on a screen, or vibrations through the air can be such powerful communication tools.
2. Blogging promotes a reflective lifestyle. Most all life forms experience the world (I'm not sure about bacteria...); I'd like to think that we humans are unique among creatures (at least those on earth) in that we are capable of reflection and the organization of our experience. Writing about our experiences is a great way of expressing our humanity.
3. Blogging promotes an interactive lifestyle. I suspect most all bloggers refer consistently to postings in other blogs. The nature of the web has grown this aspect exponentially over things like letters to the editor in a magazine, and I see it as a positive dimension.
4. It feels so hip to mention that you blog.

I have appreciated very much the feedback I've received. Perhaps I'll see you again next summer...

Returning Home

I'm sitting in the airport in Kingston, waiting to return to the U.S. We have an early flight (6:40 am). My host suggesting getting a van from the hotel at 4:00am. Nothing else this weekend has gone on time, so I figured this was a good idea to aim for being early. But the driver called from the hotel lobby at 3:28am this morning--a full 17 minutes before we set the alarm. We got here to the airport and checked in and whizzed through immigration. The plane is expected to be late (no shock there). So we sit in the waiting area...

It was a great cultural experience for Casey and me this weekend. It wasn't very much tourism at all. We got the authentic experience. The commencement ceremony at JTS was late and long; church yesterday was late and long. And then there is just the different pace of everything. Yesterday, we were to drive from Kingston to Mandeville for church (about 90 minutes) and expected to return to the hotel by about 3pm. We got back at 8:30. But it was a good time. We stopped and visited with people along the way, and everything is just very relaxed.

Our hosts were very gracious at every point. We hope to return soon.