Charles Taliaferro
Biographic Data
| ID | 447078 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Charles Taliaferro |
| GIVEN NAMES | Charles |
| FAMILY NAME | Taliaferro |
| SIGNATURE | TALIAFERRO C |
| AFFILIATIONS | St. Olaf College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5729-0761 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 61 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
In Praise of William Wainwright's Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction to this Tribute
Books That Shape Contemporary Philosophy of Religion
The Virtues and Vices of Agnosticism
This essay begins with preliminary observations about the nature of agnosticism. Based on the term’s etymology, in this essay an agnostic about some proposition (e.g., God exists) is someone who does not know whether the proposition is true. Being an agnostic about the truth of a proposition is compatible with the proposition appearing to be true or the state of affairs obtains but incompatible with an agnostic knowing its truth or that the state…
Locating the Problem of Evil
I argue that James Sterba's argument from evil involves a category mistake. He applies moral principles that pertain to ethical requirements that apply within creation to what may be called the ethics or axiology of creating and sustaining creation. The paper includes reflection on the relationship between justification and redemption, justice and mercy
Three Elements of Creation Care from an Anglican Perspective
Anglicanism fosters creation care in its legacy of natural theology, its recognition of the goodness of creation, and its balance of individualism and holism. Anglican natural theology promotes a positive view of the sciences. Reasons are offered to not follow N.T. Wright in subordinating natural theology to New Testament eschatology
Is God Invisible: An Essay on Religion and Aesthetics
In this volume, Charles Taliaferro and Jil Evans promote aesthetic personalism by examining three domains of aesthetics - the philosophy of beauty, aesthetic experience, and philosophy of art - through the lens of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, theistic Hinduism, and the all-seeing Compassionate Buddha. These religious traditions assume an inclusive, overarching God's eye, or ideal point of view, that can create an emancipatory appreciation of bea…
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion
Introduction to Topical Issue “Latin American Perspectives on Religion”
The History of Evil in Antiquity: 2000 Bce–450 Ce
Consciousness as a Prerequisite for Science and Religion
A key concern philosophically today is how to square our common sense understanding of ourselves as intentional, conscious agents with a naturalist view of the cosmos, according to which the cosmos is non-teleological, non-purposive, and consisting of mind-less processes. One strategy has been for naturalists to deny the common sense understanding of ourselves. In this essay, the reality of conscious, intentionality is affirmed as being more cert…
Thought Experiments in Philosophy of Religion: The Virtues of Phenomenological Realism and Values
We present a criterion for the use of thought experiments as a guide to possibilia that bear on important arguments in philosophy of religion. We propose that the more successful thought experiments are closer to the world in terms of phenomenological realism and the values they are intended to track. This proposal is filled out by comparing thought experiments of life after death by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman with an idealist thought e…
The Significance of Being Ethical: An essay on the case for moral realism and theism
William Irwin defends a form of moral anti-realism, according to which there are no objective moral facts. He contends that moral realism is objectionable because of its being more complex or not as simple as anti-realism; moral realism is in conflict with science; moral realism is also challenged by the fact that our moral judgements would differ if we were subject to a different biology or evolutionary past. Irwin also argues that insofar as mo…
The Ordinary is Extraordinary; The Wonder of the Mundane Physical World
Philip Kitcher and other secular naturalists assert that we have a problem-free concept of the "mundane physical world" and use the idea of our familiar material world to critique those who recognize a transcendent reality as in theism. It is argued that the naturalist's concept of the world faces problems involving the primacy of the mental, normativity, sensations and consciousness, and contemporary science. A closing section suggests, contra s…
Philosophical Methodology
The New Secular Humanists: Ronald Dworkin and Philip Kitcher on Life without God
Ronald Dworkin and Philip Kitcher recognize that traditional, religious faith-especially in Christian theistic tradition-has virtues that seem to be missing in a secular worldview. To remedy this apparent deficit, they both propose that a secular worldview can provide a satisfying foundation for a flourishing, meaningful life. Moreover, Kitcher argues that secular humanism is far more justified than a religious worldview because it does not face …
Is Naturalism Too Big to Fail?: An Audit of Strict and Broad Naturalism
The phrase »too big to fail« is used in the USA as a reason to rescue businesses from bankruptcy, because their failure would be catastrophic. This essay begins charting a case that naturalism (in all its forms, broad and strict) is not such that its abandonment would bring about a philosophical disaster. Securing such a conclusion is not possible in a single essay, but what is argued for is that the confident portrayal of naturalism as the presu…
Natural Signs and Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments – By C. Stephen Evans
A Brief History of the Soul
The Routledge companion to theism
What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy – By Gary Gutting
British Idealism: A History – By W. J. Mander
More Than Matter – By Keith Ward
The Mind and the Machine: What It Means To Be Human and Why It Matters – By Matthew Dickerson
Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002‐08 – By Thomas Nagel
Saving God: Religion After Idolatry – By Mark Johnston
The History of Evil in Antiquity: 2000 Bce–450 Ce
The Virtues of Embodiment
Surprisingly, materialists and dualists often appeal to the same factors in their depiction of being an embodied, human person: sensations, agency, and causal underpinnings. I propose that this picture be expanded to include epistemic, structural, and affective components. I further propose that these elements, taken together, be construed as virtues. Being an embodied, human person consists in the exercise of six types of virtues: Sensory Virtue…
Relativising the Ideal Observer Theory
Attitudinal metaethical theories come in objectivist and relativist kinds. An attitudinal metaethics analyzes the moral properties of action (right, wrong, indifferent, supererogatory) in terms of the attitudes of individuals or society. Some relativist theories allow that some act, A, is morally right vis-a-vis Eric in virtue of his approving A, but wrong vis-a-vis Miriam in virtue of her disapproving of A. There are several versions of absoluti…
Possibilities in Philosophy of Mind
This paper seeks to overturn the claim that Cartesian arguments for dualism based on the conceivable separation of person and body lack warrant, since it is just as conceivable that persons are identical with their bodies as it is that persons and their bodies are distinct. If the thesis of the paper is cogent, then it is not as easy to imagine person-body identity as many anti-Cartesians suppose
The Ideal Aesthetic Observer Revisited
Journal Article THE IDEAL AESTHETIC OBSERVER REVISITED Get access Charles Taliaferro Charles Taliaferro Department of Philosophy, St Olaf CollegeNorthfield, Minnesota 55057, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 30, Issue 1, January 1990, Pages 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/30.1.1 Published: 01 January 1990
Dualism and the Problem of Individuation
H. D. Lewis once remarked he did not think ‘any case for immortality can get off the ground if we fail to make a case for dualism’. Lewis vigorously defended both mind body dualism, the theory that minds (or persons) are nonphysical, spatially unextended things in causal interaction with physical, spatially extended things, as well as the conceivability of an after life. Lewis defended the intelligibility of supposing distinct, individual persons…
Pollock's Body-Switching
Journal Article Pollock's Body-Switching Get access Charles Taliaferro Charles Taliaferro Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 36, Issue 142, January 1986, Pages 57–61, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219310 Published: 01 January 1986
The Incorporeality of God
The Environmental Ethics of the Ideal Observer
Relativising the Ideal Observer Theory
Attitudinal metaethical theories come in objectivist and relativist kinds. An attitudinal metaethics analyzes the moral properties of action (right, wrong, indifferent, supererogatory) in terms of the attitudes of individuals or society. Some relativist theories allow that some act, A, is morally right vis-a-vis Eric in virtue of his approving A, but wrong vis-a-vis Miriam in virtue of her disapproving of A. There are several versions of absoluti…
The Passibility of God
John Dewey once said of philosophical problems that they are quite different from old soldiers. Not only do they never die, but they do not even fade away. Something similar might be said about the unfavourable Divine attributes of the 1950s and 60s, timelessness or eternity, necessary existence, foreknowledge of creaturely free choices, and immutability. All have contemporary defenders. Even the puzzling, traditional tenet that God is metaphysic…
Does God Violate Your Right To Privacy
Why We Need Immortality
The Ideal Aesthetic Observer Revisited
Journal Article THE IDEAL AESTHETIC OBSERVER REVISITED Get access Charles Taliaferro Charles Taliaferro Department of Philosophy, St Olaf CollegeNorthfield, Minnesota 55057, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 30, Issue 1, January 1990, Pages 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/30.1.1 Published: 01 January 1990
Divine agriculture
Unknowable Truths and Omniscience: A Reply to Kvanvig
Unknowable Truths and Omniscience: A Reply to Kvanvig Get access Charles Taliaferro Charles Taliaferro Charles Taliaferro is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St Olaf College, 1520 St Olaf Avenue,Northfield, MN 55057 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LXI, Issue 3, Fall 1993, Pages 553–566, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LXI.3.553 Published: 01 October 19…
Alternative views of healing in liberal democracies
The Concept of Faith: A Philosophical Investigation. William Lad Sessions
The Christian God
Possibilities in Philosophy of Mind
This paper seeks to overturn the claim that Cartesian arguments for dualism based on the conceivable separation of person and body lack warrant, since it is just as conceivable that persons are identical with their bodies as it is that persons and their bodies are distinct. If the thesis of the paper is cogent, then it is not as easy to imagine person-body identity as many anti-Cartesians suppose
Consciousness and the Mind of God
Introduction 1. Consciousness 2. The material world 3. Persons and bodies 4. God and the world 5. The omnipresence of God 6. Integrative theism Conclusion Select bibliography
Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason. William Wainwright
Religion, Science and Naturalism . Willem B. Drees
Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief . Jerome I. Gellman
Metaphysical Personalism: An Analysis of Austin Farrer's Theistic Metaphysics. Charles Conti
Divine Providence: The Molinist Account . Thomas P. Flint
Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology . William J. Abraham
The Virtues of Embodiment
Surprisingly, materialists and dualists often appeal to the same factors in their depiction of being an embodied, human person: sensations, agency, and causal underpinnings. I propose that this picture be expanded to include epistemic, structural, and affective components. I further propose that these elements, taken together, be construed as virtues. Being an embodied, human person consists in the exercise of six types of virtues: Sensory Virtue…
Philosophy of Religion
This chapter contains sections titled: Overview of the Current State of the Field Religious Beliefs and Religious Forms of Life Divine Attributes Evidence, Religious Experience and Secular Explanations Four Arguments about the Existence of God New Directions in the Field
Naturalism and Religion . Kai Nielsen
Philosophy (52 works) · Epistemology (33 works) · Theology and Philosophy of Evil (27 works) · Computer Science (23 works) · Theology (22 works) · Sociology (16 works) · History (15 works) · Citation (14 works) · Classics (13 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (11 works)