- This pseudo-Paper is intended as the mechanism to record time spent on the Note 'Christian Materialism1' during my Thesis research, as from 2015.
- For the actual time recorded, click on "Paper Summary" above.
Write-up2 (as at 31/08/2015 00:15:50): Christian Materialism
Plug3 Note- This Note will focus on those philosophers who profess both some form of Christianity and some form of materialism.
- The form of materialism I have in mind is that we human beings consist wholly of matter4, without the need to posit a soul5 to ensure our post-mortem survival6 (and, in particular) our posited resurrection7.
- I will also list those Christian philosophers who are dualists or hold other non-materialist accounts of human identity, though I’m particularly interested in those that resist Christian Materialism.
- This Note – or those related to it – may become more important in due course, as it might be an alternative focus for my Thesis.
- Obviously, no Christian with any claim to orthodoxy believes that all persons are essentially embodied – as God (and presumably angels) are taken to be persons and immaterial.
- I also suppose that Christians may differ as to what they think of as the intermediate state between death and resurrection (ignoring those that think that the future state is incorporeal).
- They may also differ as to whether they think matter requires animating by the breath of the Spirit in a literal sense.
- I will focus on those philosophers who are living or who were active in the latter quarter of the 20th century and / or thereafter, during which period it has been relatively unusual for a philosopher to openly espouse theism.
- A useful source of contemporary theists ought to be "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - What Do Philosophers Believe?", though there were virtually none that I recognised.
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - Twenty Years Worth of the SCP" claims (in 1998) that there are 1,000 members of the Society of Christian Philosophers.
- See also Calvin College’s (sadly rather diminutive and unrepresentative) Virtual Library of Christian Philosophy: Link.
- This Note consists mostly of lists!
- In the list of philosophers, I’ve included in the third category all the significant living philosophers I know of with Christian affiliation.
- However, in the list of works, I’ve focussed on those explicitly to do with my topic of personal identity, so many Christian philosophers don’t feature.
- Anyway, an initial8 partition is:-
- I don’t really have a study-list to hand. Reading will be covered mostly by other related Notes. However, a “starter9 pack” might be:-
- Christian Materialists:
- Baker10:
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism",
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View",
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Christians Should Reject Mind-Body Dualism",
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Death and the Afterlife",
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Materialism with a Human Face",
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Material Persons and the Doctrine of Resurrection",
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Need a Christian be a Mind/Body Dualist?",
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - What Am I?",
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - When Do Persons Begin and End?",
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - When Does a Person Begin?"
- Corcoran11:
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul",
- "Corcoran (Kevin), Ed. - Soul, Body and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons",
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Biology or Psychology? Human Persons and Personal Identity",
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Dualism, Materialism and the Problem of Post Mortem Survival",
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Constitution, Resurrection, and Relationality",
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - I'm No Soul, Man: a Response to Baltimore",
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Persons, Bodies and the Constitution Relation",
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Physical Persons and Postmortem Survival Without Temporal Gaps",
- Hershenov:
- See David Hershenov … most of his papers are relevant.
- Hudson:
- "Hudson (Hud) - A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person",
- "Hudson (Hud) - The Metaphysics of Hyperspace",
- "Hudson (Hud) - I am Not an Animal!",
- "Hudson (Hud) - Multiple Location and Single Location Resurrection",
- "Hudson (Hud) - On Constitution and All-Fusions",
- "Hudson (Hud) - Temporal Parts and Moral Personhood"
- Merricks:
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Objects and Persons",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Precis of Objects and Persons",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Replies (Book Symposium on Objects and Persons)",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - A New Objection To A Priori Arguments for Dualism",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Against the Doctrine of Microphysical Supervenience",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Composition and Vagueness",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Composition as Identity, Mereological Essentialism, and Counterpart Theory",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Endurance and Indiscernibility",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Endurance, Psychological Continuity, and the Importance of Personal Identity",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Fission and Personal Identity Over Time",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - How to Live Forever Without Saving Your Soul: Physicalism and Immortality",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - No Statues",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - On the Incompatibility of Enduring and Perduring Entities",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - On Whether Being Conscious is Intrinsic",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Perdurance and Psychological Continuity",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Persistence, Parts and Presentism",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - Realism About Personal Identity Over Time",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - The Resurrection of the Body",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - The Word Made Flesh: Dualism, Physicalism, and the Incarnation",
- "Merricks (Trenton) - There Are No Criteria For Identity Over Time".
- Murphy12:
- "Murphy (Nancey) - Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?",
- "Russell (Robert John), Murphy (Nancey), Meyering (Theo C.), Arbib (Michael A.) - Neuroscience and the Person",
- "Brown (Warren), Murphy (Nancey) & Malony (H. Newton), Eds. - Whatever Happened to the Soul: Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature",
- "Murphy (Nancey) - Human Nature: Historical, Scientific and Religious Issues",
- "Murphy (Nancey) - I Cerebrate Myself: Is there a little man inside your brain?",
- "Murphy (Nancey) - Non-Reductive Physicalism: Philosophical Issues",
- "Murphy (Nancey) - Supervenience and the Downward Efficacy of the Mental: A Nonreductive Physicalist Account of Human Action".
- Van Inwagen13:
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Material Beings",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Précis of Material Beings",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Metaphysics",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) & Zimmerman (Dean) - Metaphysics: The Big Questions",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Ontology, Identity and Modality: Essays in metaphysics",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) & Zimmerman (Dean) - Persons: Human and Divine",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - ‘I am Elizabeth Anscombe’ is Not an Identity Proposition",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - A Materialist Ontology of the Human Person",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - And Yet There Are Not Three Gods But One God",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Can Mereological Sums Change their Parts",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Dualism and Materialism: Athens and Jerusalem?",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Existence, Ontological Commitment and Fictional Entities",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Four-Dimensional Objects",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Human Destiny",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - I Look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to Come",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Materialism and the Psychological-continuity Account of Personal Identity",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Philosophers and the Words 'Human Body'",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Plantinga’s Replacement Argument",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Relational vs. Constituent Ontologies",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Number of Things",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Possibility of Resurrection",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Self: the Incredulous Stare Articulated",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - What Do We Refer to When We Say 'I'?",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - When are Objects Parts?".
- Christian Non-Materialists:
- Hasker:
- "Hasker (William) - Afterlife",
- "Hasker (William) - Minds and Bodies",
- "Hasker (William) - Persons as Emergent Substances"
- Lowe14:
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Kinds of Being: Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity and Time",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Coinciding Objects: In Defence of the ‘Standard Account’",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Entity, Identity and Unity",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Identity, Composition, and the Simplicity of the Self",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Locke: Identity",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Material Coincidence and the Cinematographic Fallacy: A Response to Olson",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Minds, Bodies and People",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and the Problem of Mental Causation",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Objects and Criteria of Identity",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Objects and Identity",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - On the Alleged Necessity of True Identity Statements",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - On the Identity of Artifacts",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Persistence and Substance",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Personal Identity and Self-Knowledge",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Persons and Their Bodies",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Real Selves: Persons as a Substantial Kind",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Review of Noonan's 'Personal Identity'",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Self, Reference and Self-reference",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Sortal terms and absolute identity",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Substance and Selfhood",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Substance, Identity and Time",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Substantial Change and Spatiotemporal Coincidence",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - The Paradox of the 1,001 Cats",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - The Problems of the Many and the Vagueness of Constitution",
- "Lowe (E.J.) - What Is a Criterion Of Identity?".
- Moreland:
- "Moreland (J.P.) & Rae (Scott) - Body & Soul - Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics",
- "Moreland (J.P.) - Review of Hud Hudson 'A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person'",
- "Moreland (J.P.) & Craig (William Lane) - Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview: Metaphysics".
- Oderberg:
- "Oderberg (David) & Laing (Jacqueline) - Human lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics", Note15
- "Oderberg (David) - The Metaphysics of Identity Over Time",
- "Oderberg (David) - Could There Be a Superhuman Species?",
- "Oderberg (David) - Coincidence Under a Sortal",
- "Oderberg (David) - Hylemorphic Dualism", Note16
- "Oderberg (David) - Johnston on Human Beings",
- "Oderberg (David) - Modal Properties, Moral Status, and Identity",
- "Oderberg (David) - Temporal Parts and the Possibility of Change",
- "Oderberg (David) - The Beginning of Existence",
- "Oderberg (David) - Persistence",
- "Oderberg (David) - Synthetic Life and the Bruteness of Immanent Causation",
- "Oderberg (David) - Survivalism, Corruptionism, and Mereology",
- "Oderberg (David) - The Metaphysical Status of the Embryo: Some Arguments Revisited",
- "Oderberg (David) - The Origination of a Human Being - Rejoinder to Persson",
- "Oderberg (David) - Voluntary Euthanasia and Justice".
- Plantinga:
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - Against Materialism",
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - Christian Philosophy At The End Of The 20th Century",
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - Materialism and Christian Belief",
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - On Mereological Essentialism",
- … to be completed once I’ve gone through all Alvin Plantinga’s works on Link.
- Quinn:
- "Quinn (Philip L.) - On the Intrinsic Value of Human Persons",
- "Quinn (Philip L.) - Review of Anthony Flew's 'The Logic of Mortality'",
- "Quinn (Philip L.) - Tiny Selves: Chisholm on the Simplicity of the Soul".
- Rea:
- "Rea (Michael), Ed. - Material Constitution - A Reader",
- "Rea (Michael) - Constitution and Kind Membership",
- "Rea (Michael) - Four-Dimensionalism",
- "Rea (Michael) - In Defense of Mereological Universalism",
- "Rea (Michael) - Lynne Baker on Material Constitution",
- "Rea (Michael) - Material Constitution: Preface, Introduction & Appendix (A Formal Statement of the Problem)",
- "Murray (Michael J.) & Rea (Michael) - Mind, body, and immortality",
- "Rea (Michael) & Silver (David) - Personal Identity and Psychological Continuity",
- "Rea (Michael) - Supervenience and Co-Location",
- "Rea (Michael) - Temporal Parts Unmotivated",
- "Rea (Michael) - The Problem of Material Constitution".
- Swinburne:
- "Swinburne (Richard) - The Evolution of the Soul",
- "Swinburne (Richard) - Discussion of Peter Unger's Identity, Consciousness and Value",
- "Swinburne (Richard) - From Mental/Physical Identity to Substance Dualism",
- "Swinburne (Richard) - Personal Identity",
- "Swinburne (Richard) - Personal Identity: The Dualist Theory",
- "Swinburne (Richard) - Reply to Shoemaker",
- "Swinburne (Richard) - Response to Derek Parfit",
- "Swinburne (Richard) - Review of Robert Nozick's 'Philosophical Explanations'",
- "Swinburne (Richard) - The Structure of the Soul".
- Taliaferro:
- "Taliaferro (Charles) - Emergentism and Consciousness: Going Beyond Property Dualism",
- "Meister (Chad) & Taliaferro (Charles) - Neuroscience and the Soul - Philosophical Issues: Introduction",
- "Taliaferro (Charles) - Pollock's Body-Switching",
- "Taliaferro (Charles) - Review of Persons: Human and Divine by Peter van Inwagen & Dean Zimmerman".
- Zimmerman:
- "Sider (Ted) & Zimmerman (Dean) - Persistence Seminar",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) & Zimmerman (Dean) - Persons: Human and Divine",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Can We Survive Our Death?",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Christians Should Affirm Mind-Body Dualism",
- "Plantinga (Alvin) - De Re et De Dicto",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Could Extended Objects Be Made Out of Simple Parts? An Argument For 'Atomless Gunk'",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Criteria of Identity and the 'Identity Mystics'",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Distinct Indiscernibles and the Bundle Theory",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Distinct Indiscernibles and the Bundle Theory",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Does God Know Our First-Person Perspectives?",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Immanent Causation",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Materialism, Dualism, and “Simple” Theories of Personal Identity",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - From Experience to Experiencer",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - From Property Dualism to Substance Dualism",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Material People",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Persistence and Presentism",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Persons and Bodies: Constitution Without Mereology?",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Persons: Human and Divine - Three Introductory Questions",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Problems for Animalism",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Properties, Minds, and Bodies: An Examination of Sydney Shoemaker's Metaphysics",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Reply to Baker's 'Christians Should Reject Mind-Body Dualism'",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Review of Heller's 'The Ontology of Physical Objects'",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Review of Hoffman & Rosenkrantz's 'Substance: Its Nature and Existence'",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Temporal Parts and Supervenient Causation: The Incompatibility of Two Humean Doctrines",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Temporary Intrinsics and Presentism",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - The A-Theory of Time, The B-Theory of Time, and ‘Taking Tense Seriously’",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Can One “Take Tense Seriously” and Be a B-theorist?",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Constitution of Persons by Bodies: A Critique of Lynne Rudder Baker’s Theory of Material Constitution",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Metaphysics of Time & God",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Personal Identity and the Survival of Death",
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Theories of Masses and Problems of Constitution",
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) & Zimmerman (Dean) - What Is Our Place In the World?".
- Others:
- "Adams (Robert Merrihew) - Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity", Adams,
- "Alston (William) & Bennett (Jonathan) - Locke on People and Substances", Alston+Bennett
- "Cooper (John) - Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-dualism Debate", Cooper
- "Leftow (Brian) - Souls Dipped in Dust", Leftow
- This is a place-holder17.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 2: - This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (31/08/2015 00:15:50).
- Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Footnote 3: - A number of my philosophical Notes are “promissory notes” currently only listing the books and papers (if any) I possess on the topic concerned.
- I’ve decided to add some text – whether by way of motivation, or something more substantive – for all these identified topics related to my Thesis.
- As I want to do this fairly quickly, the text may be confused or show surprising ignorance.
- The reader (if such exists) will have to bear with me, and display the principle of charity while this footnote exists.
Footnote 8: To be checked & corrected in due course.
Footnote 9: - Actually this has become rather an exhaustive list – there’s lots of interesting stuff to get through.
- As a mitigant, many of these papers will be covered under other Notes.
Footnote 10: Works by, or about, Lynne Rudder Baker are mostly covered elsewhere – eg: Click here for Note.
Footnote 11: Corcoran is very much a supporter of Lynne Rudder Baker.
Footnote 12: - Murphy is only the (co-)editor of two of these books, and many / most of the contributors will have Christian affiliation of some sort (probably Catholic).
- However, I have not listed the other contributors / editors directly unless they are otherwise well-known (to me).
- I have, however, listed Murphy’s contributions to the edited collections.
Footnote 13: - There are so many potentially-relevant papers by Van Inwagen that I’ve had to decide whether to list them all or only some …
- “All” is more useful, without repeating those in the books listed – except from anthologies edited by Van Inwagen.
Footnote 14: - I’m not sure how committed (if at all) Lowe was to Christianity, nor how important he was as a philosopher (he died in 2014).
- He did once argue for the modal ontological argument against Oppy, but in "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - What Do Philosophers Believe?" he’s only down as “leaning towards” theism.
- The TLS Obituary (Link) described him as “one of the leading philosophers of his generation” but made no mention of any religious faith.
- See his Durham page: Link.
- This list may therefore be too much.
Footnote 15: I’ve not bought the book as it is too expensive!
Footnote 16: This (rather than hylomorphic) is the chosen spelling!
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2018