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Max Baker-Hytch | |
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Born | Max Baker-Hytch 30 July 1986 |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Exeter St Cross College, University of Oxford |
Thesis | Reformed Epistemology and Naturalistic Explanations of Religious Belief (2014) |
Doctoral advisor | Brian Leftow |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Theology and philosophy |
Sub-discipline | |
School or tradition | Analytic philosophy |
Institutions | |
Main interests |
Max Baker-Hytch (born 30 July 1986) is a British analytic philosopher, Christian theologian, and fellow of Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford. He possesses significant influence on analytic theology, epistemology, and philosophy of religion. He also proactively defends Christianity and engages in contemporary debates on theological or religious matters such as the existence of god on social media. [1]
Max Baker-Hytch completed the Bachelor of Arts in theology with philosophy at the University of Exeter, graduating with first class honours. He continued his studies at the same university, obtaining the Master of Arts in ethics, religion, and society with distinctions in 2010. During this period, he also established a musical ensemble and fulfilled the role of guitarist. His music successfully gained the media attention, including coverage by the BBC. [2]
In 2014, he attained the Doctor of Philosophy degree from St Cross College, University of Oxford, under the supervision of Brian Leftow. [3] His thesis titled Reformed Epistemology and Naturalistic Explanations of Religious Belief maintains a comparatively high rate of citations and is considered a phenomenal contribution to the field. [4] [5]
From 2014 to 2015, he held the position of research fellow at Somerville College, University of Oxford, where a research was conducted on the project of new insights and directions in religious epistemology. He then spent an ephemeral period of time in Indiana, United States, where he served as a research fellow at the University of Notre Dame. [6] [7] Upon his return to Oxford in 2016, he was appointed as a tutorial fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, [8] where he continues his academic research and lectures mature students on philosophy.
Baker-Hytch contends that mutual epistemic dependence is an essential mechanism for human acquisition of knowledge. Due to the limited cognitive faculties, human beings indispensably depend on fellow creatures' testimony about the external world and are inevitably susceptible to the influence and beliefs of contemporaries, especially in regard to propositions which are neither empirically verifiable nor falsifiable, such as religious or theological matters. He claims that mutual epistemic dependence provides an optimal equilibrium between three distinct sets of competing attributes: (1) interpersonal trust and precautions against deception, (2) accountability for individual advancement of knowledge and epistemic self-reliance, and (3) potential acquisition, cultivation, and refinement of intellectual virtues and the capacity to overcome and eliminate intellectual hurdles and obstacles. [9] Mutual epistemic dependence implies that theism is comparatively plausible due to the strong probability of the diverse distribution of knowledge and the indeterminacy of the eternal fate of human beings which is not solely based on their beliefs at the time of their natural deaths. [10]
Faith is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept. In the context of religion, faith is "belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion". According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, faith has multiple definitions, including "something that is believed especially with strong conviction", "complete trust", "belief and trust in and loyalty to God", as well as "a firm belief in something for which there is no proof".
Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such topics date from ancient times, and appear in the earliest known texts concerning philosophy. The field is related to many other branches of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, logic and ethics.
Alvin Carl Plantinga is an American analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology, and logic.
Evidentialism is a thesis in epistemology which states that one is justified to believe something if and only if that person has evidence which supports said belief. Evidentialism is, therefore, a thesis about which beliefs are justified and which are not.
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski is an American philosopher. She is the Emerita George Lynn Cross Research Professor, as well as Emerita Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, at the University of Oklahoma. She writes in the areas of epistemology, philosophy of religion, and virtue theory.
Nicholas Paul Wolterstorff is an American philosopher and theologian. He is currently Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. A prolific writer with wide-ranging philosophical and theological interests, he has written books on aesthetics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of education. In Faith and Rationality, Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga, and William Alston developed and expanded upon a view of religious epistemology that has come to be known as Reformed epistemology. He also helped to establish the journal Faith and Philosophy and the Society of Christian Philosophers.
In the philosophy of religion, Reformed epistemology is a school of philosophical thought concerning the nature of knowledge (epistemology) as it applies to religious beliefs. The central proposition of Reformed epistemology is that beliefs can be justified by more than evidence alone, contrary to the positions of evidentialism, which argues that while non-evidential belief may be beneficial, it violates some epistemic duty. Central to Reformed epistemology is the proposition that belief in God may be "properly basic" and not need to be inferred from other truths to be rationally warranted. William Lane Craig describes Reformed epistemology as "One of the most significant developments in contemporary religious epistemology ... which directly assaults the evidentialist construal of rationality."
George I. Mavrodes was an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Michigan.
Alvin Ira Goldman is an American philosopher who is emeritus Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a leading figure in epistemology.
Metaepistemology is the branch of epistemology and metaphilosophy that studies the underlying assumptions made in debates in epistemology, including those concerning the existence and authority of epistemic facts and reasons, the nature and aim of epistemology, and the methodology of epistemology.
Robert N. Audi is an American philosopher whose major work has focused on epistemology, ethics, rationality and the theory of action. He is O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and previously held a chair in the business school there. His 2005 book, The Good in the Right, updates and strengthens Rossian intuitionism and develops the epistemology of ethics. He has also written important works of political philosophy, particularly on the relationship between church and state. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers.
Nancey Murphy is an American philosopher and theologian who is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. She received the B.A. from Creighton University in 1973, the Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1980, and the Th.D. from the Graduate Theological Union (theology) in 1987.
The evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN) is a philosophical argument asserting a problem with believing both evolution and philosophical naturalism simultaneously. The argument was first proposed by Alvin Plantinga in 1993 and "raises issues of interest to epistemologists, philosophers of mind, evolutionary biologists, and philosophers of religion". The EAAN argues that the combined belief in both evolutionary theory and naturalism is epistemically self-defeating. The argument for this is that if both evolution and naturalism are true, then the probability of having reliable cognitive faculties is low. This argument comes as an expansion of the argument from reason, although the two are separate philosophical arguments.
Nick Trakakis is an Australian philosopher who is Assistant Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Phenomenology of Religion of the Australian Catholic University. He has previously taught at Monash University and Deakin University, and during 2006–2007 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame. He works mainly at the intersections of philosophy, religion, and theology.
Peter D. Harrison is Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy at the University of Queensland and a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, Australia.
Religious epistemology broadly covers religious approaches to epistemological questions, or attempts to understand the epistemological issues that come from religious belief. The questions asked by epistemologists apply to religious beliefs and propositions whether they seem rational, justified, warranted, reasonable, based on evidence and so on. Religious views also influence epistemological theories, such as in the case of Reformed epistemology.
Michael Abram Bergmann is an American analytic philosopher teaching in the department of philosophy at Purdue University. His primary interests are epistemology and philosophy of religion. In epistemology, he writes mostly on externalism and, in philosophy of religion, he mostly writes on the epistemology of religious belief and the problem of evil.
Jennifer Lackey is an American academic; she is the Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. Lackey is known for her research in epistemology, especially on testimony, disagreement, memory, the norms of assertion, and virtue epistemology. She is the author of Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge and of numerous articles and book chapters. She is also co-editor of The Epistemology of Testimony and The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays.
Kelly James Clark is an American philosopher noted for his work in the philosophy of religion, science and religion, and the cognitive science of religion. He is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids Michigan.
Analytic Theology (AT) refers to a growing body of primarily Christian theological literature resulting from the application of the methods and concepts of late-twentieth-century analytic philosophy.
Max is studying Philosophy at Exeter.
Religious Experience Residential Fellows Max Baker-Hytch
"Is It Possible to Have a Veridical Experience of God's Absence?," Max Baker-Hytch
Max Baker-Hytch is a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford.