Launching Experimental Philosophy of Religion

Does the existence of the universe demand an explanation? Do animals dying in forest fires represent challenging pointless suffering? Is our free will compatible with God’s infallible knowledge of the future? These are the kinds of philosophical questions that a recent program involving Blueprint 1543 tackled.

Traditionally, such questions are addressed by philosophers and theologians just arguing it out,
but this program brought in the tools of psychological science to see whether the intuitions and
judgments of professional philosophers reflect those of ordinary people around the world. This
approach is known as “experimental philosophy,” and has been profitably applied to other areas
of philosophy such as ethics and metaphysics. Rarely, however, had such an approach been
applied to “philosophy of religion.”

But why ask non-philosophers their thoughts concerning philosophical problems? A big part of the motivation is that many philosophical arguments are based upon premises which, themselves, are based upon what seems to be right to the philosopher. Take, for instance, what is known as the ‘ principle of sufficient reason .’ This principle captures the idea that facts (that are not definitionally true like squares having four sides) require some kind of sufficient reason or explanation for them being the case. If my house is on fire, there needs to be a reason why it is on fire. But do most of us carry around a “principle of sufficient reason” intuition in our heads or are some philosophers strange in this regard? If we do have such an intuition, does it apply to most domains of facts or only select ones?

Shaun Nichols, a philosopher from Cornell University, led a team in investigating just these sorts of questions. A big reason for the curiosity is that a prominent argument for God’s existence, the cosmological argument , rests heavily on the principle of sufficient reason being accepted as true. The cosmological argument comes in many forms but a simple version from William Lane Craig can be summarized this way:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
   

And then Craig argues that a God who is by nature (definitionally) uncaused and beginning-less
is a good candidate for the cause of the universe. Notice that premise 1 is a version of the principle of sufficient reason. Nichols’ team has gathered evidence from many countries around the world that converge upon the idea that people do, indeed, hold a principle of sufficient reason, but they apply it to things like stars and mountains more readily than to God or moral truths. That the world exists needs a reason. That God exists or that it is good to love your mother, not so much. Some of this work is already published .

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the principle of sufficient reason is true or that the cosmological argument is definitive. It does, however, move the burden of proof. Generally, we give widely distributed judgments the benefit of the doubt, and so it looks like the Cosmological Argument is on firmer ground now than before the “Launching the Experimental Philosophy of Religion” project started.

Blueprint 1543 was able to support this project in several ways. We helped Ian Church conceptualize the project and write the original grant proposal, and to create a system for refereeing project proposals that yielded five sub-projects. We also supported his team with our event design and facilitation skills so that we could help these various project teams form a supportive collegial community across institutions and projects. And I (Justin) helped Dr. Church and the Hillsdale team’s “ problem of evil ” project by providing input on the research design and data analyses.

Publications from this program have begun appearing in scholarly journals with many more to come in the upcoming years. Most importantly, from my perspective, is that a new way of doing philosophy of religion has been launched, an empirical, “experimental” approach. The tools of the sciences and reflections from philosophy and theology have been brought together to make progress on some big, enduring questions. Promoting this kind of integrated inquiry is a big part of what Blueprint 1543 is all about.