Core Intuitions Research Articles

Human holiness as religious shape apologia

The article critically examines Hans Urs von Balthasar’s core intuition that human holiness has apologetic value for Christianity. It argues that von Balthasar’s claim relies on two notions of ‘proof’, and, in distinguishing between the two notions, it clarifies his position. This clarification is followed by a defense of von Balthasar’s view that it can be rational to accept Christian faith on the grounds of human holiness. However, by way of conclusion, the article proposes that von Balthasar’s intuition could, in principle, be applied to a variety of both religious and non-religious traditions, which thus undermines his assumption that human holiness has apologetic value for Christianity alone.

Refocusing core intuitions: A concretizing role for analogy in conceptual change

AbstractThis article outlines a theoretical framework for viewing students' conceptions and the effect of analogies on students' conceptions. There are several points involved in this perspective: (a) Components of students' conceptions can be considered to be at various levels—verbal‐symbolic knowledge, conscious models, implicit models, and core intuitions. (b) Components at the deeper, less articulated levels (especially core intuitions) are particularly entrenched. (c) Conceptual change in cases involving core intuitions can be considered to be the adjustment of attributive clusters for a class of situations. (d) In order to change the attributive cluster for a target situation, the target must be enriched with new concrete entities or features, providing nuclei for the reattribution of agency. (e) Analogies can help with this reattribution or refocusing by helping the student enrich his or her representation of the target situation.

Is God Necessarily Good?

Few propositions are so widely affirmed among Christian theists as (1) God is wholly good. We say of God that he is wholly good when we mean to say that God never does evil. One proposed explanation for why God is wholly good, of course, is that (2) God is necessarily good. Although (1) is (I suspect, wholly) uncontroversial among Christian theists, (2) clearly does not enjoy such universal favour. Whereas such prominent theists as St Anselm, St Thomas Aquinas, Alvin Plantinga (1974), and T. V. Morris (1987) have defended the truth of (2), other theists claim to have found good reason to doubt God's necessary goodness. In this paper I will attempt to show that God's goodness is accidental to him. My argument will proceed faithfully along Anselmian lines, i.e. a key premise will concern God conceived of as ‘ the being than which none greater can be conceived’. In addition to this, I will need to activate action-theoretic machinery which will be crucial to the derivation. Rather than detracting from God's greatness, the argument's conclusion, namely (3) God is contingently good, is seen as faithfully articulating one facet of Anselm's core intuition of God as the ‘greatest possible being’. Is God necessarily good? I shall shortly present an argument which gives one good reason to doubt God's necessary goodness. But before I begin, I shall need to develop a backdrop of philosophical theology and action-theoretic machinery from which to suspend the argument in question.