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Interview with J.P. Moreland: Consciousness & the Existence of God

We did an interview with J.P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University, about his just released Consciousness and the Existence of God (Routledge, 2008). Moreland has written similar items on this subject-matter in Philosophia Christi 7:2 (Winter 2005) and 1:1 (Summer 1999).

What do you attempt to do in Consciousness and the Existence of God?

The book’s central claim is that the existence of finite, irreducible consciousness (or its regular, lawlike correlation with physical states) provides strong evidence for the existence of God. I call this the Argument from Consciousness (AC). I defend AC and rebut its extant rivals.

Chapters three through five rebut naturalist rivals to AC: John Searle and contingent correlation, Timothy O’Connor and emergent necessitation, Colin McGinn and mysterian “naturalism.” Chapters six and seven rebut two additional rivals: David Skrbina and panpsychism, Philip Clayton and pluralistic emergentist monism. Given AC and the failure of its rivals, non-theists should prefer strict physicalism to emergent property dualism. In chapter eight, I argue that, contrary to what many claim, science provides virtually no evidence at all for strict physicalism. Since most physicalists claim that science is the main justification for the view, it is important to ask why strict physicalism is so popular. In chapter nine, I argue that the fear of God – “the cosmic authority problem” – is the main reason for physicalism’s popularity. I conclude that it is the relationship between dualism (substance or property) and theism, especially as formulated in AC, that accounts for physicalism’s hegemony.

How would you characterize this monograph’s contribution? Is this philosophy of mind or philosophy of religion work or both?

To date, there has been no book length treatment of this topic. Swinburne, Oppy, and others have short treatments of this argument. Further, the vast majority of treatments of irreducible property dualism and its implications take place within a prior commitment to naturalism. My book combines philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion into a book-length treatment of the problem from a theistic perspective. In that regard, it is uniqe in the literature.

What sort of discussion would you like to see sparked as a result of your book?

I want to challenge naturalists to opt for strict physicalism as a result of taking the naturalist turn because I believe that it is the most reasonable alternative for them by far and it is obviously false. I also want to challenge the naturalist employment of emergent properties as a way of harmonizing the irreducible features of various entities with a naturalist worldview. Emergent properties are the things that need to be solved, and calling them “emergent” names but does not solve anything, or so I argue.

J.P. Moreland is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University. He is currently working on other projects at the intersection of philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind, along with developing further work and leadership with his award-winning Kingdom Triangle (Zondervan, 2007). For more of J.P. Moreland, visit www.kingdomtriangle.com

Philosophia Christi 10:1 (Summer 2008)

By next week, our summer issue of Philosophia Christi will be hitting the mail boxes of our subscribers. To subscribe or become a member of the EPS (which includes a subscription to Philosophia Christi), click here.

The summer issue includes articles that refute the claims of the “new atheists” (including Paul’s Copan’s article). We also feature contributions on the evidential importance of religious experience and the unity of the self in light of naturalistic claims in philosophy of mind and neuroscience. We also have articles on libertarian freedom, an argument against internalism, and a critique of Alstonian realism, along with many other articles, notes and book reviews.

To see the full table of contents, click here.

You can purchase the issue here.

Or, better yet, if you are a first-time subscriber to Philosophia Christi, get our summer issue FREE, plus a 2 year subscription, all for a reasonable $30. Click here.

Update Letter from EPS President Paul Copan

Dear EPS friends,

It has been an exciting season for the Evangelical Philosophical Society! We continue to host and sponsor national and regional conferences, mature our web presence through a first-class website, and increase our Philosophia Christi subscription numbers. Please tell your friends, librarians, and colleagues about our first-time subscriber discount. If your library does not yet subscribe to Philosophia Christi, let them know about our discount, which amounts to a $50 savings. More on this below!

EPS Conferences

We are pleased to have regional conferences that continue to do well.  I
recently attended the Greer-Heard Forum in New Orleans, which ran concurrently
with an EPS regional conference. As is his custom, our own Bob Stewart pulled
together a superb conference. The Forum’s exchange between Bart Ehrman and Dan
Wallace on textual criticism was highly engaging. (You can check out Ed
Komoszewski’s assessment of the dialogue at his Parchment and Pen blog entitled
"Friday Night
Lights
". For the official NOBTS summary of the dialogue, see Gary D. Myers,
"Greer-Heard
08: Top scholars debate reliability of the New Testament at NOBTS forum
,"
April 16, 2008..

Next year’s Greer-Heard will feature Harold Netland, a faithful EPS member,
and Paul Knitter on "Religious Pluralism." Last month at Trinity Seminary, both
of them undertook their first round in this genuine religious dialogue-rather
than the all-too-typical lowest-common-denominator version. Harold wrote in an
email, "The exchange was very gracious and irenic, but also pointed and direct.
I think it was good for students to see that two people can disagree radically
on these issues without getting ugly and treating the other inappropriately."
(You can read an edited transcript of their discussion
here.)  Such events are just a
sampling of what many EPS philosophers are engaged in throughout the year. May
we prayerfully support and encourage one another in these efforts! And I hope
many of you can make Round Two in New Orleans next year.

This November many of us will be attending the EPS annual meeting in
Providence, RI.  It will be good to catch up with you then.  EPS vice
president Chad Meister tells me that many fine paper proposals have come in, but
he and his colleagues at Bethel College await word from ETS regarding room
allocations.  Bill Craig, who is spearheading the annual apologetics
conference (also in Providence) tells me that plans are moving ahead nicely. (By
the way, Bill Craig and I, who co-edited Passionate Conviction, are now co-editing
the next B&H book taken from our annual apologetics conference-with another
great lineup of contributors, including Charles Taliaferro, Stew Goetz, Bob
Stein, Craig Evans, David Hunt, Victor Reppert, and Mark Linville.) We look
forward to another fine array of speakers at this conference, which will be a
particularly exciting and strategic meeting, as it will be our first in the
fairly unchurched region of New England. Chad Meister has also put together a
wonderful session at this year’s American Academy of Religion conference in
November (Chicago, IL). The topic is on "Religious Diversity." Paul Moser
(Loyola University, Chicago) will present on "Religious Exclusivism" and Keith
Yandell (University of Wisconsin-Madison) will present on "The Diversity of
Religious Experience." The respondent will be by Paul Knitter (Union Theological
Seminary). May God use our efforts there to produce much fruit!

EPS Website & Philosophia Christi Subscriptions

As you all know, our website is looking sharp, attracting more and more
subscribers -wow, have we come a long way!  Since October 2007, when our
new website was launched, subscriptions have been steadily rising (1-2 per day). 
For our current 10:1 issue (Summer 2008), we are mailing Philosophia Christi to
1400+ subscribers-to over 200 libraries and 1200 to individuals. This represents
a huge jump from just six months ago, and we have every reason to believe these
numbers will continue to increase throughout the rest of the year and beyond. 
Having an upgraded, cutting-edge website has directly contributed to a high
renewal rate.  Joe Gorra, Scott Smith, Craig Hazen, Lenny Esposito, and
Chad Meister have all labored mightily to make this happen. Our hearty thanks to
them once again!  Efforts in marketing (which includes blogging at the
website, promoting among acquisition librarians at the American Library
Association, etc), offering subscription incentives, and improving our
subscription management database have all helped contribute to our growth.

Please help us spread the word about Philosophia Christi and its importance
for library collections, philosophy and theology departments, scholars,
undergraduate and graduate students, pastors, and friends. Please let people
know about our first-time subscriber discount:

$30 = the current issue + 2 year subscription (4 issues).

This extraordinary deal with not be available for long! Take advantage of
this discount by
subscribing here or calling 562-906-4570 (10-5pm, PST).

Let’s continue to pray diligently that as we all "plant" and "water," the
Lord will continue to bring the growth to advance His kingdom.  May we
remember that we are co-laborers with God, who can effectively use these
marketing tools and this marvelous technology-but may we not trust in them! 
As Craig Gay reminds us in The Way of the (Modern) World, technological advance
not only tends to depersonalize life, but can easily obscure and diminish our
sense of dependence on God.  Whether we’re presenting papers, giving
lectures, engaging in debates, writing books, or defending the Christian faith
with a non-Christian friend, let us humbly rely on God in prayer with full,
grateful hearts.

It is a joy to stand together with you all in "the defense and confirmation
of the gospel."

Warmly in Christ,

Paul Copan
EPS President

Interview with Craig J. Hazen: Five Sacred Crossings

We interviewed Craig J. Hazen, Editor of Philosophia Christi, about his new book Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith (Harvest House, 2008). If you are in the Southern California area, Biola University is sponsoring a “Five Sacred Crossings” event on May 8th at 7:30 pm. Register here.

How would you characterize Five Sacred Crossings?

That’s pretty straight forward. Five Sacred Crossings is a novel, pure and simple. The best way to capture the genre is to compare it to Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code is a fast-paced, page turning mystery novel that packed into its center is some teaching about the origins of Christianity. Unfortunately, Dan Brown bought an ugly package of historical gossip and unfounded nonsense as the “suppressed truth” he was hoping to reveal to the world. But what better way to communicate such things than for a couple of years to have every other person on a given airliner reading about it! Dan Brown had the wrong message, but the right vehicle to disseminate it.

What I attempted to do was similar except that I packed into the core of the mystery novel key elements of the Christian worldview that make Christianity attractive and grounded in knowledge.

A funny side point is that the knowledgeable folks at Harvest House decided to position Five Sacred Crossings as a book of apologetics and not as a novel because the Christian fiction genre is so over saturated right now. They wanted my new book not to be lost in that category. Hence, they helped come up with a subtitle “A Novel Approach to Reasonable Faith.” So I don’t know where you will find Five Sacred Crossings in the bookstore – in the apologetics/religion section, or in the fiction section.

Without giving too much away, can you say what the book is about?

The book is about a few weeks in the life of a college professor and brilliant natural linguist named Michael Jernigan who takes a college class through some teachings called “the five crossings” that he learned about in the Cambodian mountains as a young soldier in the Vietnam War. Through these teachings, and raucous discussion among a group of very diverse students, the class learns how the wisest of people approach life’s biggest questions. The book is punctuated by an intense story about an Indonesian terror cell in the college town. I certainly won’t tell you how it ends, but I’ve been stunned by the fact that about a dozen grown men (not to mention the scores of women) have contacted me to tell me they couldn’t put it down and were in tears when they finished it.

Why did you write it?

It seems to me that Christian philosophers, apologetics, and theologians in our generation have done some extraordinary work in re-establishing the intellectual credibility and the integrity of the Christian worldview in a secular and pluralistic age. What we haven’t done, though, is find new ways to communicate these great truths to the masses who are so confused on issues of religious truth and the meaning of life. I thought I would try my hand at writing something that would appeal to people I know who would never read an apologetics textbook or a philosophy article in an attempt to engage them with clear thinking on the issues that matter most.

Who is your intended readership? And can you tell us about some of the reaction to the book?

I had certain folks in mind when I was putting the story together. Think about the millions of people who watch Oprah every day – they are open to spiritual and religious ideas, but want to connect with them first on an emotional level. They are open to thinking about the big issues if they are presented in a relevant and engaging way.

Forget about my intended readership for a moment, though. The book has been out long enough so that we know who is reading it – and it is really remarkable. Everyone you can imagine. Octogenarians, non-Christians, teenagers, women, men, people who haven’t read a novel in decades, Christians, people in the highest ranks of the federal government, major TV stars, pastors, atheist college professors, a woman from Liechtenstein, a stuntman from Brazil, an Israeli soldier, a missionary in Cambodia, and on it goes.

As an evangelical Christian, it is very exciting to receive feedback from non-Christians who are reading it and caught up in the story and the ideas presented. I’ve heard dozens of accounts from unbelievers who read the story and then contacted me or other Christian people they know. The book really throws them for a loop. They resonate with all five of the “crossings” and find the main character very attractive—but at the same time they know that these are Christian ideas being presented. It’s as if they needed to hear the big issues of the Gospel in a compelling new way. I intentionally wrote this book to break down stereotypes of Christianity and provide a fresh look at eternal truths. As one life-time agnostic told me after reading it, “we’ve got to talk about this – if this is how you look at the world it is far more rational and attractive than I have assumed.”

Why should philosophers and apologists read fiction?

Christian philosophers and apologists need to read fiction (and poetry, and listen to music, and at least occasionally watch films and TV) in order to be culturally relevant. Jesus led his revolution primarily by telling unforgettable stories that stuck with people who heard him. Humans are wired for hearing and telling stories. The great ideas that are so compelling and persuasive to high-level Christian thinkers need to become part of the mindset for people in all societal strata. Therefore we need new channels of communication to make these ideas relevant to everyone. This is a creative project of the highest order. Although philosophers and apologists may not be the ones writing the novels, screenplays, and operas that ultimately move the culture, we need to be familiar with these modes of communication and discourse if we want to see our ideas last beyond the life cycle of our latest book from a university press.

Are there fiction writers that you admire or use as your model?

No, I can’t say I used anyone as a model. Although I would recommend that anyone wanting to try their hand at what I call “didactic Christian fiction” should, for two reasons, read widely among very popular novelists whose works fill the racks at popular bookstores and airports. First, so you can see what level of discourse and style the general population finds engaging (after all, these are the people who you are seeking to influence with this kind of writing project). Second, it will encourage you because I think for the most part your reaction will be: “Oh my goodness, I can do much better than that.” You might be wrong, but it will help overcome your insecurities about shifting gears to fiction writing.

Can you tell us what it was like to write Five Sacred Crossings?

The thing I enjoyed the most was discovering myself where the story was going next. I did not have a detailed master plan before writing, so every day was a little surprise with regard to the unfolding of the narrative. I am still surprised by my own ending. Re-reading it was an experience that I certainly have never had when writing academic books and essays. I picked it up started to read somewhere in the middle and couldn’t put it down. I wrote the darn thing yet got caught up in the story myself! It was far more exciting and emotional than I remember when first writing it out.

What would you like to see happen with this book?

Of course, I would like to see it recommended by Oprah so it gets the widest possible reading! Okay, so maybe that’s not going to happen, but it’s a good dream. My book probably won’t get that kind of exposure, but I hope some other compelling, thoughtful, stereotype-breaking Christian literature does. I think this is going to be most likely if those of us in the community of Christian philosophy and apologetics interact with the Christian creative community more intentionally and intensely.

From where you observe, as the Director of a cutting-edge Graduate Program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University, can you say how we – as American Evangelicals – are doing in our apologetic efforts?

How are we doing with apologetics? Not bad. There is one advantage when secular culture encroaches more and more on the Church’s turf – the Church seems to awaken to some of the important things she has neglected like the apostolic command in 1 Peter 3:15 to “be prepared always to give an answer.” By any measure the interest in clear-thinking Christianity has been on the increase. This may just be a regional phenomenon, but huge crowds come out to Biola to hear lectures and debates now that would have only attracted a handful twenty years ago. We have a long way to go, but I think significant progress has been obvious and measurable.

Our greatest weakness with regard to apologetics is that by-and-large the average Christian and pastor still thinks that knowledge and faith are non-overlapping realms of human endeavor and experience. Our greatest strength with regard to apologetics is that so many leaders and teachers in the movement model that fact and that it is not just about giving answers and winning arguments, but rather it is about living a full-orbed life in Christ.

How might Five Sacred Crossings cultivate the strengths of our apologetic efforts?

I think Five Sacred Crossings is centered on this key strength I just mentioned. The book uses arguments and persuasion, but the key characters model grace, kindness, courage, love, and sacrifice to make the arguments real and weighty. I see my colleagues in apologetics and philosophy at Biola doing this every day and it is more inspiring than just about anything you can encounter. These are men and women living the great answers to life’s questions, not just speaking them.

Craig J. Hazen is the Director of the Graduate Program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University. He also serves in that program as Professor of Comparative Religion and Apologetics. More of Craig Hazen can be read at his conversantlife.com blog.

Interview with Chad Meister: Philosophy of Religion Reader

We interviewed Chad Meister, Vice President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, about his recently released Philosophy of Religion Reader (Routledge, 2007).

Chad, you are a seasoned observer and contributor to philosophy of religion work. Give us a sense for how this field in philosophy has blossomed over the last 50 years or so.

The field of philosophy of religion has exploded in recent years. In some ways this is a surprising phenomenon, for in the mid-twentieth century, with the rise of logical positivism, discussions of religious matters were basically relegated to Bible and religion departments. With the demise of positivism, and the work of such first-rate philosophers as Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne, philosophy of religion was resurrected. There is now widespread interest in the philosophical reflection on religious issues, and this is evident in the growing number of articles, monographs, companions, journals, and anthologies dedicated to the field. It is perhaps right now one of the “hottest” areas of philosophy.

As you know there are different philosophy of religion anthologies available today. What makes your selections unique? What sort of contribution are you trying to achieve with this anthology?

In the past, most philosophy of religion anthologies focused exclusively on Western theistic issues such as arguments for and against God’s existence, religious language, morality, the nature of God, and so forth. While much work in the field is still Western and theistic in nature (and these are indeed yet productive and fertile times for engaging in such issues), religious parochialism is unwarranted, and the discussion is now beginning to swing in broader directions. There are rich traditions of philosophical thought in non-Western and non-theistic religions, and as the world community has globalized in myriad ways in recent decades, such interaction, engagement, and expansion should be reflected in philosophical and religious publications as well. So besides traditional Western issues (including such recent ones as intelligent design and open theism), I have also included in my reader non-theistic perspectives of ultimate reality and their responses to evil, religious experience, and death and the afterlife. I have also included some of the recent trends which are often ignored in anthologies such as feminism in philosophy of religion and religion and the environment. In addition, I wanted this work to be a useful reader and guide for students, so I included a significant number of pedagogical tools (as I note below). I don’t think any reader/anthology on the market has as many student aids.

I’m finishing up a textbook that is designed to be used along with this reader, and it is scheduled to be published yet this year. Many of the central issues included in the reader (both Eastern and Western) are also addressed in this textbook. Another good introductory textbook that would work well in tandem with this reader is Reason and Religious Belief by Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger (Oxford University Press, 2003, 2008).

What was it like to produce this anthology? Can you briefly walk us through why you wanted to do this anthology? Were there guidelines/principles that you followed to help decide what to include vs. what to exclude from this volume?

I was invited by the publisher to craft the reader and the corresponding textbook. I strongly suggested that they be more global than most of the readers and texts in print since this more accurately reflects current trends and research interests in the field. The publisher agreed and allowed me to move in this direction. In terms of the entries, I wanted to include classic and contemporary pieces – both Eastern and Western – that have (or I believe will) stand the test of time as major works in philosophy of religion.

Producing this volume was a lot more work than I anticipated. Not only did I read through all 63 essays several times before submitting them to the publisher (all 700 pages of them), I also wrote section introductions, introductions and reflection questions for each essay, and annotated further readings for every essay. I also wrote a glossary of technical terms and compiled an extensive, three-column index. Just thinking about that project makes me tired!

Anthologies are a wonderful occasion to consider where a discussion has gone and where it might go. Are there areas of philosophy of religion that remain underdeveloped for one reason or another? Where might some fruitful research yet occur in light of the trajectory of the field?

As I mentioned above, most of the philosophy of religion readers and anthologies published in the past few decades have focused almost exclusively on a handful of issues. These are no doubt fundamental and timeless topics. However, the field is now much broader than this, and there is much work to be done in engaging with Eastern thought, continental and feminist studies, religious diversity and comparative religion. Furthermore, studies in philosophical theology (which is often taken to be an area within philosophy of religion) is beginning to blossom, and I believe the next several years will reflect much new and exciting work in these areas.

Can you identify any emerging philosophy of religion leaders who are doing some important work today?

There are a number of scholars who are emerging leaders in the different areas of philosophy of religion. I’ll mention just a few who come to mind: Michael Rea (philosophical theology), Robin Collins (fine-tuning argument for God), Paul Griffiths (religious diversity), Sarah Coakley and Pamela Sue Anderson (feminist philosophy of religion), Paul Copan (ethics and the moral argument for God), Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul Draper (problem of evil), Paul Moser (divine hiddenness), Jerome Gellman (religious experience and mysticism), and Charles Taliaferro (coherence of theism, among others).

You do work in philosophy of religion and Christian apologetics. These two areas are interrelated. What might professional philosophers of religion learn from apologetics ministries? Conversely, what might apologetics ministries learn from professionals in philosophy of religion?

Apologetics ministries are typically focused on questions and concerns which are immediately relevant to the culture. For example, many such ministries have been responding recently to the works of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett, as these new atheists are having a significant influence on the culture. Tackling some of the philosophical and moral challenges raised by the new atheists would certainly be a worthy endeavor for professional philosophers of religion. Thankfully, some have. Bill Craig and I, for example, have brought together about a dozen philosophers (as well as a few theologians and biblical scholars) to take on these new atheist challenges in a forthcoming book we are co-editing.

Apologetics ministries are also addressing some important questions that have not been on the forefront of philosophy of religion studies in recent years. For example, religious rites comes to mind. With the liturgical renewal currently occurring in many contexts, such as in the emergent church movement, it would behoove philosophers of religion to reflect on such questions as What is a religious rite? Why have religious rites been neglected in recent philosophy of religion? How important are such rites in the practice of religion? Charles Taliaferro has begun to tackle these questions, but much more philosophical work needs to be done here.

Apologetics ministries can learn much from philosophers as well. For example, the rigorous philosophical work that’s been done on a few key apologetics issues has been quite impressive in recent years. As a case in point, consider the remarkable works of Alvin Plantinga and Eleonore Stump on the problem of evil. Many apologists do not realize that now even most atheist philosophers agree that the logical problem of evil has been forcefully rebutted – so much so that leading atheist philosophers no longer focus on it but have moved on to the evidential problem instead. Reading journals like Philosophia Christi would also benefit apologists as many apologetics-related issues are regularly addressed in the journal by leading philosophers of religion.

Chad Meister is the Director of the Philosophy Program and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bethel College. More information about Chad’s speaking and writing can be found at www.bethelcollege.edu

Metaphysics articles, Pruss on choice and substances & important reviews

Articles

Huw Price, “Metaphysics after Carnap: the ghost who walks?” To appear in David Chalmers, Ryan Wassermann and David Manley, eds., Metametaphysics (OUP, 2009).

William Lycan, “Phenomenal Intentionalities.”

W. Russ Payne, “What is a Law of Nature.”

Toby Handfield, “The metaphysics of dispositions and causes.”

Gyula Klima, “The Medieval Problem of Universals.” (SEP)

Anil Gupta, “Definitions.” (SEP)

Carl Hoefer, “Causal Determinism.”

Peter Menzies, “Counterfactual Theories of Causation.”

Blog posts

Alex Pruss, “Prediction of Choices.”

_______, “Why do we need substances if presentism holds?”

_______, “Love of substances”

Reviews

Eric T. Olson, What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology, Oxford University Press, 2007, 250pp. Reviewed by Michael O’Rourke, University of Idaho.

Lucy O’Brien, Self-Knowing Agents, Oxford University Press, 2007, 231pp. Reviewed by Robert J. Howell, Southern Methodist University.

Steven Horst, Beyond Reduction: Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science, Oxford University Press, 2007, 223pp. Reviewed by D. Gene Witmer, University of Florida.

Georg Gasser (ed.), How Successful Is Naturalism?, Ontos, 2007, 300pp. Reviewed by Joseph Rouse, Wesleyan University.

Trenton Merricks, Truth and Ontology, Oxford University Press, 2007, 202pp. Reviewed by Ben Caplan, Ohio State University.

D.Z. Phillips book and Philosophia Christi symposium

In a few weeks, Ashgate will release Whose God? Which Tradition? The Nature of Belief in God, edited by the late D. Z. Phillips. See the full book description here.

The Winter 2007 issue of Philosophia Christi featured a symposium, titled, “D. Z. Phillips on God, Evil, and Contemporary Philosophy of Religion,” It enjoyed contributions by Charles Taliaferro, Brendan Sweetman, David Basinger, and R. Douglas Geivett, along with a final response by D. Z. Phillips.

Virtue and Vice: Moral and Intellectual

June 26-27, 2008
California State University, Fullerton

Keynote speakers include Linda Zagzebski and Roger Crisp and several other
paper presenters. The goal of this conference is to address several key
questions at the intersection of ethics, epistemology, and virtue theory: .e.g,
What are the primary features of moral virtues (e.g., courage) and vices (e.g.,
cowardice)? What are the primary features of intellectual virtues (e.g.,
open-mindedness) and vices (e.g., dogmatism)? How are the moral and intellectual
virtues (or vices) related to one another? Can one live a good life or attain
knowledge without virtue? How difficult is it to become virtuous or vicious? 
Web:
http://hss.fullerton.edu/philosophy/fipc.htm