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Religious Commitment and the Benefits of Cognitive Diversity: a Reply to Trakakis

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Abstract

Metaphilosophical discussions about the philosophy of religion are increasingly common. In a recent article in Sophia, N.N. Trakakis (56:605–630, 2017) advances the view that Christian Philosophy is closer to ideology than philosophy. This is because philosophy conducted in the Socratic tradition tends to emphasize values antithetical to religious faith such as independence of thought, rationality, empiricism, and doubt. A philosopher must be able to follow the arguments wherever they lead, something that the religious believer cannot do. I argue that there are two main problems with this view. First, Takakis faces an unpalatable dilemma. It is possible his view recommends a rejection of itself, making it self-referentially incoherent. If it does not recommend such a rejection, then Trakakis’s preferred method is not necessary for genuine philosophical inquiry. Second, Trakakis makes numerous knowledge claims about the psychological motivation of religious philosophers but never offers evidence for these claims. Third, Trakakis never considers that the existence of cognitive diversity is truth conducive. Even if devout religious believers cannot conduct genuine philosophical inquiry, unless Trakakis thinks we should ignore all works by religious believers, then it is irrelevant whether they are genuine philosophy.

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Notes

  1. Trakakis even goes so far as to point out that a distinguished philosopher of religion Keith Parsons has left the field. While Parsons has published in philosophy of religion, it is not clear to me that his contributions make him ‘distinguished.’ I see exactly zero examples of major players leaving the field. But, this is neither here nor there.

  2. Thanks to an anonymous referee for helping me to see this point.

  3. Perhaps Trakakis could draw a distinction here by claiming that certain enlightenment values might be grounded in Christianity historically, but not normatively. But there needs to be an argument for drawing this distinction.

  4. For more on deep time and how it should be applied to religion and inquiry, see Schellenberg (2015).

  5. See Lougheed “The Epistemic Value of Deep Disagreements,” unpublished manuscript.

  6. His book culminates in the Value in Diversity Hypothesis which states that ‘[i]dentity diverse groups perform better than homogeneous groups’ (Page 2007, 319). See also Surowiecki (2004) for more empirical support. For a summary of empirical support for the epistemic benefits of disagreement and cognitive diversity, see Matheson (2015).

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Correspondence to Kirk Lougheed.

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I am grateful to anonymous referees for helpful feedback on this project. This paper was made possible, in part, by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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Lougheed, K. Religious Commitment and the Benefits of Cognitive Diversity: a Reply to Trakakis. SOPHIA 57, 501–513 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0649-6

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