Archive for August, 2008

This book is part of the "Contours of Christian Philosophy" series from IVP, and offers an introduction to Epistemology, from a Christian viewpoint. This volume is subtitled, "Becoming Intellectually Virtuous".

Wood argues that the "intellectual virtues" (e.g. wisdom, understanding, foresight, love of truth) are foundational to our pursuit of the truth. The ancient philosophers made a link between intellectual life and character, and the Bible repeatedly praises various intellectual virtues.

"Epistemology, then, is not (or ought not to be) concerned merely with the piecemeal appraisal of individual beliefs but with what kinds of persons we are becoming: whether we are intellectually humble rather than arrogant, studious rather than merely idly curious, insightful rather than dull, wise and not fools."

He then devotes several chapters to exploring different intellectual virtues (and their corresponding vices). There are virtues that motivate us to find truth, virtues that help us to maintain and defend our beliefs, virtues that enable us to communicate our beliefs, and virtues that enable us to apply our beliefs. A person of integrity is both morally and intellectually virtuous, and uses their intellect to promote human flourishing. As well as virtues to cultivate, there are intellectual vices to avoid. For example, obtuseness, gullibility, superstitiousness, close-mindedness, willful naiveté, and superstition.

Knowledge, like wealth, cannot be sought at any cost, but is subject to moral restraints.

There are very helpful sections on intellectual honesty and dishonesty, wisdom and prudence. Prudence is about practical wisdom – a prudent person learns about their strengths and weaknesses, and knows what actions to take to achieve a morally good end.

The philosophically isolated and aseptic manner in which many contemporary epistemological issues are discussed gives them all the lure of a good puzzle, with rewards commensurate to those that come from successfully tackling a tough brain-teaser. But seeing epistemological issues, and the academic life in general, as contributing factors to a well-lived virtuous life imbues them with much greater significance.

The next section of the book covers some of the more standard topics for an epistemology textbook. There is a chapter on foundationalism, where he critiques strong foundationalism – which ultimately ignores the problem of sin.

A chapter on epistemic justification sees him discuss and critique evidentialism and coherentism, before moving on to reliabilism. On the whole, I found these sections a little heavy going as a reader without much knowledge of philosophy, but the author does use plenty of example scenarios that help to ground some of the abstract language that is inevitably used in these sort of discussions.

It is at this point that the intellectual virtues are brought back into the picture, and the subject of religious belief is examined. How can we be justified in holding religious beliefs? He interacts with Plantinga and claims that internalist (evidentialism, coherentist) models of epistemic justification have problems when dealing with religious beliefs.

The book then closes with a very interesting look at the role of emotions in proper cognitive function. It is not enough to be simply intellectually capable, we must have right emotions and morals in order to think correctly. Though emotions can negatively affect reasoning, the lack of appropriate passions can do the same.

Whether or not this is the best book for explaining all the current epsitemological theories out there I do not know, but for me, the primary benefit of this book is to show the importance of the intellectual virtues, and demonstrate how interconnected with epistemic justification they really are. It is not enough for us to be impassive, correctly functioning thinking machines (i.e. computers), in fact, due to our fallen nature, we can never operate that way anyway. Rather, we are to seek wisdom, prudence, integrity that we may not only know the truth, but live it and communicate it.