JETS 39/1 (March 1996) 123–140 PHILOSOPHICAL APOLOGETICS, THE CHURCH, AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE J. P. MORELAND* In 1756 John Wesley delivered an address to a gathering of clergy on how to carry out pastoral ministry with joy and skill. He catalogued a number of things familiar to most contemporary believers: the cultivation of a disposition to glorify God and save souls, a knowledge of Scripture, and similar notions. At the beginning of his list, however, Wesley focused on something seldom expressly valued by most pastoral search commit- tees: “Ought not a Minister to have, First, a good understanding, a clear apprehension, a sound judgment, and a capacity of reasoning with some closeness?”1 Time and again throughout the address Wesley unpacked this remark by admonishing ministers to know what would sound truly odd and almost pagan to the average congregant of today: logic, metaphysics (including the ˜rst principles of being), natural theology, geometry, and the ideas of important ˜gures in the history of philosophy. Wesley’s remarks were not unusual in his time. A century earlier the great Reformed pastor Richard Baxter was faced with lukewarmness in the Church and unbelief outside the Church. In 1667 he wrote a book to meet this need, and in it he used philosophy to argue for the existence of the soul and the life to come. The fact that Baxter turned to philosophy instead of small groups or praise hymns is worth pondering. Over a mil- lennium earlier, Augustine summarized the view of many early Church fathers when he said, “We must show our Scriptures not to be in con˘ict with whatever [our critics] can demonstrate about the nature of things from reliable sources.”2 Philosophy was the main tool Augustine used in this task. Today things are diˆerent. Most evangelical seminaries with which I am familiar do not have professional philosophers on their faculties, nor do they train ministerial candidates to do philosophy or motivate them to see philosophical acumen as part of their calling. And in my experience of speaking in literally hundreds of churches, the ˜rst thing that comes to many Christian minds when they hear the word “philosophy” is that Col 2:8 (on their view) warns them to stay away from it. It is no accident that * J. P. Moreland is professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, 13800 Biola Avenue, La Mirada, CA 90639. 1ÙJ. Welsey, “An Address to the Clergy,” The Works of John Wesley (3d ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979) 481. 2ÙAugustine De genesi ad litteram 1.21. 124 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY these facts run concurrently with an increasingly marginalized evangelical community, which as a result is struggling with a crisis of self-image as the culture turns neopagan. I do not pretend to have a thorough answer to these latter two di¯cul- ties, but I do believe there is a causal connection between them and the diminished role of philosophy in our collective evangelical worship and witness. Social historian John Gager has pointed out that even though the early Church was a minority movement that faced intellectual and cul- tural ridicule and marginization it maintained internal cohesion and a courageous witness, thanks in no small measure to the powerful role in the broader Christian community of the philosophically trained apologists in the ˜rst centuries of the Christian faith.3 The same point applies with real force to our current condition. In my view, if the evangelical com- munity would give greater attention to philosophy—especially philosophi- cal apologetics in both formal educational settings, publishing, and local church life—this could help a great deal in our eˆorts to penetrate eˆec- tively our culture and proclaim Christ and a Christian worldview to out- siders and to our own brothers and sisters. But if we continue to eschew philosophy we will continue to speak largely to ourselves, and our dialect will, I fear, be ˜deistic. Space does not permit me to attempt to prove this claim directly. In- stead I shall do three things: (1) clarify the nature and tasks of philosoph- ical apologetics, (2) describe the current scene in order to surface areas where we need to focus our attention as a community, and (3) oˆer some brief remarks about a strategy for the future. I hope that my discussion of these three desiderata will show, even if only implicitly, just why we need to be more intentional and intense about promoting philosophical apologetics within our ranks. I. DIFFERENT TYPES OF PHILOSOPHICAL APOLOGETICS If philosophy is hard to de˜ne, philosophical apologetics is harder still. Nevertheless as a working de˜nition let us characterize philosophical apo- logetics as a philosophical activity that has as its goal (or perhaps as its result) the increasing or maintaining of the epistemic justi˜cation of a Christian worldview in whole or in part.4 Let us accept this gloss as ade- quate. Note two things about the de˜nition. (1) Philosophical apologetics involves the direct use of philosophy. Thus historical evidences per se are 3ÙJ. G. Gager, Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity (Englewood Cliˆs: Prentice-Hall, 1975) 86–87. 4ÙDoes an atheist who oˆers good arguments for the soul (assuming as I do that Christianity teaches that souls exist) practice philosophical apologetics? Not if the latter is de˜ned by good epistemic intentions toward Christianity. Still, such arguments have the result of increasing our justi˜cation for believing in the soul and may be counted as philosophical apologetics, at least in a secondary sense. Yet in this case would these arguments have to be used by Christian theism to support a Christian doctrine before they would count as philosophical apologetics? I leave the matter open. 125 PHILOSOPHICAL APOLOGETICS, THE CHURCH, AND CULTURE not part of philosophical apologetics. (2) Philosophy, as well as its em- ployment by Christians, goes beyond philosophical apologetics. All cases of philosophical apologetics are cases of philosophy, but the converse does not hold. As I see it, there are at least four diˆerent types of philosophical apol- ogetics. My aim in delineating these is not simply informational. My hope is that when these are clari˜ed they can help all of us be more intentional in trying to relate our academic work to philosophical apologetics, what- ever other purposes we may have. 1. Direct defense. In direct defense, one uses philosophy with the primary intention of enhancing or maintaining directly the epistemic jus- ti˜cation of Christian theism or some proposition taken to be explicit to or entailed by it (hereafter I will simply refer to Christian theism). There are two basic forms of direct defense, one negative and one positive.5 The less controversial of the two is a negative direct defense where one at- tempts to remove defeaters to Christian theism. If you have a justi˜ed be- lief regarding some proposition P, a defeater is something that weakens or removes that justi˜cation. Defeaters come in two types.6 A rebutting defeater gives justi˜cation for believing non-P—in this case, that Chris- tian theism is false. For example, attempts to show that the Biblical con- cept of the family is dysfunctional and false or that homosexuality is causally necessitated by genes or brain states and that therefore it is not a proper object for moral appraisal are cases of rebutting defeaters. An undercutting defeater does not give justi˜cation for believing non-P but rather seeks to remove justi˜cation for believing P in the ˜rst place. Cri- tiques of the arguments for God’s existence are examples of undercutting defeaters. When defeaters are raised against Christian theism, a negative defense seeks either to rebut or refute those defeaters. By contrast, a positive direct defense is an attempt to build a positive case for Christian theism. Arguments for the existence of God, objective morality, the existence of the soul, the value and nature of virtue ethics, and the possibility and knowability of miracles are examples. This type of philosophical apologetics is not accepted by all Christian intellectuals. For example, various species of what may be loosely called Reformed episte- mology run the gamut from seeing a modest role for a positive direct de- fense to an outright rejection of this type of activity. 2. Philosophical polemics. In philosophical polemics, one seeks to crit- icize views that rival Christian theism in one way or another. Critiques of scienti˜c naturalism, physicalism, pantheism and normative ethical rela- tivism are all cases of philosophical polemics. 5ÙSee R. Nash, Faith and Reason (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988) 14–18. 6ÙFor a useful discussion of various types of defeaters see J. Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (Totowa: Rowman and Little˜eld, 1986) 36–39; R. Baergen, Contemporary Episte- mology (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1995) 119–124. 126 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 3. Theistic explanation. Suppose we have a set of items x through x i n that stand in need of explanation and we oˆer an explanans E as an adequate or even best explanation of the explananda. In such a case, E explains x through x , and this fact provides some degree of con˜rmation i n for E. If a certain intrinsic genre statement explains the various data of a Biblical text, then this fact oˆers some con˜rmation for that statement. Now Christian theists ought to be about the business of exploring the world in light of their worldview and, more speci˜cally, of using their theistic beliefs as explanations of various desiderata in intellectual life. Put diˆerently, we should seek to solve intellectual problems and shed light on areas of puzzlement by utilizing the explanatory power of our worldview. For example, for those who accept the existence of natural moral law, the irreducibly mental nature of consciousness, natural human rights, or the fact that human ˘ourishing follows from certain Biblically mandated ethical and religious practices, the truth of Christian theism provides a good explanation of these phenomena. And this fact can pro- vide some degree of con˜rmation for Christian theism. I will mention shortly how the discipline of philosophy enters into this type of intel- lectual practice because it overlaps with the way philosophy is relevant to the next type of philosophical apologetics.7 4. Integration. The word “integration” means “forming or blending into a whole; uniting.” The human intellect naturally seeks to ˜nd the unity that is behind diversity, and in fact coherence is an important mark of rationality. In conceptual integration one’s theological beliefs are blended and uni˜ed with propositions judged to be rational to belief as true from other sources into a coherent, intellectually satisfying worldview. One of the goals or results of integration is to maintain or in- crease both the conceptual relevance of and epistemological justi˜cation for Christian theism. To be engaged in the task of integration is to em- bark on a journey that is at once exciting and di¯cult. Integration is no easy task. It is a lifelong project that should occur within an individual be- liever’s life and among the various members of the Christian community working together. Part of the di¯culty of this journey is due not only to the massive amount of information and vast array of studies that need to be consulted but also to the fact that there are many diˆerent aspects of and attitudes toward integration itself. It is beyond my present scope to attempt to give anything even approximating a typology of these aspects and attitudes.8 It may be helpful, however, to list some examples where the need for integration arises as well as some of the diˆerent ways that Christian theology interacts with other disciplines in the process of de- veloping an integrated Christian worldview. Here are some cases that illustrate the need for integration. 7ÙExplanation can be seen as one purpose for certain types of integrative practices. But because of its importance I make it a category of its own. 8ÙFor a brief typology of diˆerent aspects of integration see W. Hasker, “Faith-Learning Integration: An Overview,” Christian Scholar’s Review 21 (March 1992) 234–248. spread run 1 pica long 127 PHILOSOPHICAL APOLOGETICS, THE CHURCH, AND CULTURE (1) A Biblical exegete becomes aware of how much her own cultural background shapes what she can see in the Biblical text, and she begins to wonder whether meanings might not reside in the interpretation of a text and not in the text itself. She also wonders if certain hermeneuti- cal methodologies may be inappropriate, given the nature of the Bible as revelation. (2) A psychologist reads literature regarding identical twins who are reared in separate environments. He notes that they usually exhibit simi- lar adult behavior. He then wonders what free will amounts to, if there is really any such thing. And if not, he ponders what to make of moral responsibility and punishment. (3) A political science professor reads John Rawls’ Theory of Justice and grapples with the idea that society’s primary goods could be distributed in such a way that those on the bottom get the maximum bene˜t even if people on the top have to be constrained. He wonders how this compares with a meritocracy, in which individual merit is rewarded regardless of so- cial distribution. Several questions run through his mind: What is the state? How should a Christian view the state and the Church? What is jus- tice, and what principles of social ordering ought we to adopt? Should one seek a Christian state or merely a just state? (4) A neurophysiologist establishes speci˜c correlations between cer- tain brain functions and certain feelings of pain, and she puzzles over the question of whether there is a soul or mind distinct from the brain. (5) An anthropologist notes that cultures frequently diˆer over basic moral principles and wonders whether this proves that there are no ob- jectively true moral values that transcend culture. (6) A businessman notices that the government is not adequately caring for the poor. He discusses with a friend the issue of whether busi- nesses have corporate moral responsibilities or only individuals have moral responsibility. (7) A mathematician teaches Euclidean geometry and some of its alter- natives and goes on to ask the class if mathematics is a ˜eld that really conveys true knowledge about a subject matter or if it merely oˆers inter- nally consistent formal languages expressible in symbols. If the former, then what is it that mathematics describes? If mathematical entities exist and are timeless, in what sense did God create them? (8) An education major is asked to state his philosophy of education. In order to do this he must state his views of human nature, truth, how people learn, the role of values in education, and so on. He wonders how his Christian convictions inform these issues. In each of the cases listed above, there is a need for the person in ques- tion—if he or she is a Christian—to think hard about the issue in light of the need for developing a Christian worldview. When one addresses prob- lems like these, there will emerge a number of diˆerent ways that theol- ogy can interact with an issue in a discipline outside theology. Here are some of the diˆerent ways that such interaction can take place. (1) In the two-realms view, propositions, theories, or methodologies in theology and another discipline may involve two distinct, nonoverlapping 128 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY areas of investigation. For example, debates about angels or the extent of the atonement have little to do with organic chemistry. Similarly it is of little interest to theology whether a methane molecule has three or four hydrogen atoms in it. (2) In the complementarity view, propositions, theories, or method- ologies in theology and another discipline may involve two diˆerent, com- plementary, noninteracting approaches to the same reality.9 Sociological aspects of church growth and certain psychological aspects of conversion may be sociological or psychological descriptions of certain phenomena that are complementary to a theological description of church growth or conversion. (3) In the direct interaction view, propositions, theories, or method- ologies in theology and another discipline may directly interact in such a way that either one area of study oˆers rational support for the other or one area of study raises rational di¯culties for the other. For example, certain theological teachings about the existence of the soul raise rational problems for philosophical or scienti˜c claims that deny the existence of the soul. The general theory of evolution raises various di¯culties for certain ways of understanding the book of Genesis. Some have argued that the big-bang theory tends to support the theological proposition that the universe had a beginning. (4) In the presuppositions view, theology tends to support the presuppo- sitions of another discipline and vice versa. Some have argued that many of the presuppositions of science (e.g., the existence of truth, the rational, or- derly nature of reality, the adequacy of our sensory and cognitive faculties as tools suited for knowing the external world) make sense and are easy to justify given Christian theism but are odd and without ultimate justi˜cat- ion in a naturalistic worldview. Similarly some have argued that philo- sophical critiques of epistemological skepticism and defenses of the existence of a real, theory independent world and a correspondence theory of truth oˆer justi˜cation for some of the presuppositions of theology. 9ÙR. Bube has complained that my characterization of complementarity is confused and is actually a description of what he calls compartmentalization (Putting It All Together [Lanham: University Press of America, 1995] 168; cf. chaps. 6, 10). For Bube, compartmentalization treats science and theology as diˆerent descriptions about diˆerent kinds of things with no common ground or possibility of con˘ict. Complementarity views science and theology as diˆerent de- scriptions of the same reality. Unfortunately, Bube is simply wrong in this complaint toward my position. What he calls compartmentalization is close to what I call the two-realms view of integration, and my description of complementarity is an accurate one. The source of Bube’s con- fusion is revealing. I claim that the complementarity view eschews interaction between science and theology, and Bube says that it embraces such interaction. But Bube equivocates on what “interaction” means in this context. For me it is epistemic interaction, roughly the same descrip- tion of the same reality that can be in con˘ict or concord to varying degrees of strength. For Bube interaction amounts to taking two diˆerent (noninteracting in my sense) perspectives and forming them into a whole. For example, a completely scienti˜c description of the origin of life in natural terms could be described in theological terms as God’s activity in bringing life into be- ing. It is clear that his notion of interaction is not the one I deny in explicating complementarity. Moreover my use of interaction is crucial in understanding the signi˜cance for scienti˜c meth- odology of gaps in the natural causal fabric due to libertarian agency and primary causal activity on God’s part. spread run 1 pica long 129 PHILOSOPHICAL APOLOGETICS, THE CHURCH, AND CULTURE (5) In the practical application view, theology ˜lls out and adds detail to general principles in another discipline and vice versa, and theology helps one practically apply principles in another discipline and vice versa. For example, theology teaches that fathers should not provoke their children to anger, and psychology can add important details about what this means by oˆering information about family systems, the nature and causes of anger, and so forth. Psychology can devise various tests for as- sessing whether one is a mature person, and theology can oˆer a nor- mative de˜nition to psychology as to what a mature person is. These are some of the ways that integration takes place. From the ex- amples and models listed above, it should be clear that philosophy is central to the task of integration. Nevertheless that task of forming an integrated worldview is a very di¯cult one, and there is no set of easy steps that exhaustively describes how that task is to be conducted or what role philosophy should play in the quest for integration. With this in mind, the following is a list of principles that can aid someone unfamiliar with philosophy to think more clearly about its role in integration. (1) Philosophy can point out that an issue thought to be a part of another discipline is really a philosophical issue. It often happens that scholars untrained in philosophy will discuss some issue in their ˜eld and, without knowing it, cross over into philosophy. When this happens the discussion may still be about the original discipline, but it is a discus- sion within philosophy. For example, attempts to put limits on a given discipline and attempts to draw a line of demarcation between one ˜eld of study and another, say between science and theology, are largely philosophical matters. This is because such attempts assume a vantage point outside and above the dis- cipline in question where one asks second-order questions about that dis- cipline. Philosophy focuses on these kinds of second-order questions. Consider the following six propositions that seek for science to place a limit on theology and vice versa: (S1) Theological beliefs are reasonable only if science renders them so. (S2) Theological beliefs are unreasonable if science renders them so. (S3) Theological beliefs are reasonable only if arrived at by something closely akin to scienti˜c methodology. (T1) Scien- ti˜c beliefs are reasonable only if theology renders them so. (T2) Scienti˜c beliefs are unreasonable if theology renders them so. (T3) Scienti˜c beliefs are reasonable only if arrived at by theologically appropriate methods. Contrary to initial appearances, these propositions are not examples of science or theology directly placing limits on the other, for none is a state- ment of science or theology. Rather, all are philosophical statements about science and theology. Principles about science and theology are not the same as principles of science and theology. These six principles are philo- sophical attempts to limit science and theology and show their relationship. Here is a second example of where a discussion crosses over into philos- ophy almost unnoticed. Evolutionist: The origin of life from inanimate matter is a well-estab- lished scienti˜c fact. 130 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY Creationist: But if life arose in the oceans (abiogenesis) as you claim, then dilution factors would have kept the concentration of large macromol- ecules to levels so small as to have been negligible. Evolutionist: Well, so what? I do not think abiogenesis took place in the ocean anyway. Rather, it took place in some isolated pool that had some concentrating mechanism in place. Creationist: But there is no geological evidence for such pools. Further, the probabilities for such a process are incredibly small. And in any case, evidence appears to be coming in that the early earth’s atmosphere was a reducing atmosphere, in which case the relevant reactions could not occur. Evolutionist: Give us more time and we will solve these problems. The only alternative, creationism, is too fantastic to believe. It involves reli- gious concepts and is not science at all. Creationist: Well, neither is evolution science. Science requires ˜rst- hand observation, and since no one was there to observe the origin of ˜rst life, any theory about that origin is not science, strictly speaking. The discussion starts out as a scienti˜c interaction about chemical re- actions, probabilities, geological evidence, and so on. But it slides over into a second-order philosophical discussion (one that represents a misunder- standing of the nature both of creationism and science) about what science is and how one should de˜ne it. These issues are surely relevant to the debate, but there is no guarantee that two disputants trained in some ˜rst-order scienti˜c discipline have any expertise at all about the second- order questions of what science is and how it should be practiced. If sci- entists are going to interact on these issues, then philosophy will be an essential part of that interaction. (2) Philosophy undergirds other disciplines at a foundational level by clarifying, defending, or criticizing the essential presuppositions of that discipline. Since philosophy operates as a second-order discipline that in- vestigates other disciplines, and since philosophy examines broad, foun- dational, axiological, epistemological, logical and metaphysical issues in those other disciplines, then philosophy is properly suited to investigate the presuppositions of other ˜elds. Thus philosophy plays a regulative role for Christian intellectual activity—including apologetics—and is crit- ical to our community if we are to articulate and defend our theology to thinking people, especially to those outside the Church. Philosophy can provide structure and sharpness to our discourse in the public square. For example, in linguistic studies issues are discussed regarding the existence, nature and knowability of meaning. These issues, as well as questions about whether and how language accomplishes reference to things in the world, are the main focus of the philosophy of language and epistemology. Again, science assumes there is an external world that is orderly and knowable, that inductive inferences are legitimate, that the senses and mind are reliable, that truth exists and can be known, and so on. Orthodox theology assumes that religious language is cognitive, that knowledge is possible, that an intelligible sense can be given to the claim that something exists that is not located in space and time, that the cor- 131 PHILOSOPHICAL APOLOGETICS, THE CHURCH, AND CULTURE respondence theory of truth is the essential part of an overall theory of truth, and that linguistic meaning is objective and knowable. These pre- suppositions, and a host of others besides, have all been challenged. The task of clarifying, defending, or criticizing them is essentially a philosoph- ical task. If evangelicals wish to speak out on issues and move beyond a surface analysis of them, we need philosophy. I grow weary of laypeople who have no clue about what Christian ideas have to do with the issues that con- stitute their vocations. Training in logic, metaphysics, epistemology and ethics is a crucial part of local church discipleship in this regard. (3) Philosophy can aid a discipline by helping to clarify concepts, argu- ment forms, and other cognitive issues internal to a ˜eld. Sometimes the concepts in a discipline appear to be contradictory, vague, unclear, or cir- cularity-de˜ned. Philosophers who study a particular discipline can aid that discipline by bringing conceptual clarity to it. An example would be the wave/particle nature of electromagnetic radiation and the wave nature of matter. These concepts appear to be self-contradictory or vague, and attempts have been made to clarify them or to show diˆerent ways of un- derstanding them. Another example concerns some conceptions of the mechanisms in- volved in evolutionary theory. Some scientists have held that evolution promotes the survival of the “˜ttest.” But when asked what the “˜ttest” were, the answer was that the “˜ttest” were those that survived. This was a problem of circularity within evolutionary theory, and attempts have been made to rede˜ne the notion of ˜tness and the goal of evolution (e.g., the selection of those organisms that are reproductively favorable) to avoid circularity. Whether these responses have been successful is not the point. The point is, rather, that philosophers have raised problems for a scienti˜c theory regarding issues of conceptual clarity. In these and other examples like them, philosophy can help to clarify issues within a discipline. When philosophy is brought to bear on questions of this sort, the result may be that the theory in question is problematic because it involves an internal contradiction or is somehow self-refuting. For example, the sociological claim that there is no diˆerence between intellectual history (roughly, the attempt to trace the development of ideas through history by focusing on the rational factors involved in the ideas themselves, including their own inner logic and relationships to ideas com- ing after them—for example, the development of empiricism from John Locke to George Berkeley to David Hume) and the sociology of knowledge (the attempt to trace the development of ideas as a result of nonrational factors in a given culture—for example, social status, economic conditions, and so on) is sometimes justi˜ed by an appeal to conceptual relativism. The claim is made that diˆerent cultures have diˆerent language games, diˆerent views of the world, and so forth, and that all of one’s views are determined by nonrational factors and thus are not to be trusted. Such a claim is self-refuting, for presumably this theory itself would be untrust- worthy on its own terms. 132 JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY By way of application, Christians need to be involved in political, social and ethical issues. But the evangelical voice in this regard often sounds tinny and sloganistic because our proclamations do not express a well- developed political, social or ethical theory. And we do not have the latter because we do not know the philosophical issues necessary to developing these theories. (4) Philosophy provides a common language or conceptual grid wherein two disciplines can be directly related to one another and integrated. Sometimes two diˆerent disciplines will use a term in a slightly diˆerent but not completely unrelated way. When this occurs, philosophy can help to clarify the relationship between the diˆerent disciplinary uses of the term in question. For example, sometimes an operational de˜nition of a notion can be related to an ordinary language de˜nition of that notion or a de˜nition from another ˜eld. An operational de˜nition is, roughly, a de˜nition of a concept totally in terms of certain laboratory or experimental operations or test scores. Thus one could operationally de˜ne a number of sociological concepts (minority group, traditional family roles, group leadership) or psychological terms (depression, intelligence) completely in terms of an op- eration or test score. A person could be said to be depressed if and only if that person would score between such and such a range on a standard psy- chological test. Now these operational de˜nitions may be related to our ordinary language notions of the relevant concepts in question, but they may not be clearly related—and, in any case, they are certainly not identical to them. So philosophical clarity needs to be given before we can specify the re- lationship between depression as it is understood in ordinary language and depression as it is operationally de˜ned in some test. This type of philosophical elucidation is especially important when the term in question appears to be normative in nature. Thus if one tries to give an operational, psychological de˜nition of a “mature” or “healthy” adult, then all one can give is a descriptive de˜nition, not a prescriptive one, for psychology as it is currently practiced is a descriptive ˜eld. Philos- ophy focuses on moral prescriptions and oughts. Psychology focuses on fac- tual descriptions. So philosophy becomes relevant in clarifying the relationship between a “mature” adult, psychologically de˜ned, and a “ma- ture” adult taken as a normative notion (i.e. as something we ought to try to be like). Philosophy also helps to clarify and relate the diˆerent disciplinary descriptions of the same phenomenon. For example, biologists describe a human being as a member of the classi˜cation Homo sapiens. Philosophy, theology, law and political science (to name a few) treat a human being as a living entity called a human person. It is a philosophical question as to whether the two notions are identical and, if they are not, how they relate to one another. (5) Philosophy provides external conceptual problems for other dis- ciplines to consider as part of the rational appraisal of theories in those disciplines (and vice versa). A philosophical external conceptual problem spread run 1 pica long