“Speaking in tongues” is a phenomenon that evokes various reactions among evangelicals. Although there has been a growing scholarly effort to address exegetical, theological, psychological, and historical issues related to speaking in tongues, very little has been done to address philosophical issues. In this article I analyze speaking in tongues using speech act theory to account for how an utterance that is nonintelligible to the utterer can be responsibility-bearing in the sense developed by William Alston. Adopting Nicholas Wolterstorff’s use of superintended agency discourse, I argue that speaking in tongues meets the appropriate conditions to do so.
Defenders of divine command metaethics ethics (DCM) have argued that one advantage of such theories is their ability to vindicate the objectivity of moral judgments. Some critics of DCM have contested this; they argue that divine command theories are subjectivist theories and inherit the problems such theories have in accounting for apparently objectivist features of our moral thought. I will examine and critique three examples of this criticism. David Brink’s appeal to appraiser independence, Elizabeth Tropman’s appeal to stance independence and Michael Huemer’s idea of observer independence, I will argue that none of these criticisms succeeds.
In this brief paper I suggest that felony murder might be helpfully added to William Lane Craig’s ensemble of legal analogies for penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). The upshot of including it is that Craig becomes enabled to dodge a worry raised by Oliver Crisp about imputing serious crimes to personally innocent individuals. However, I also point out that there could be issues with this move which are more trouble than they are worth. So, I conclude by proposing that Craig might be best served by either revising his view of retributivism or becoming a nonnecessitarian about the atonement.
This article seeks to make an ontological distinction, of ethical and theological importance, between artificial intelligence and human beings. It will be demonstrated that humans possess phenomenal consciousness and therefore possess selves, while artificial intelligence at most satisfies a functionalist account of consciousness and therefore does not possess a self. That human consciousness is phenomenal will be argued for by examining how subjects learn and apply abstract concepts. Moreover, it will be argued that phenomenal experience entails a self, which is not emergent. Because humans have selves and AI systems do not, AI is not identical to human beings.
