Professor Peter Forrest

Biography

Like many academic philosophers Peter Forrest came to the philosophy after some years concentrating on another subject, in his case mathematics. (His first academic appointment was a Senior Tutor in the Mathematics Department of the University of Western Australia.)

He holds that philosophy is important but no more important than other areas of inquiry. He sees the value of academic philosophy as helping us think in a more systematic and reflective fashion on disputed questions, for the sake of understanding. Hence academic philosophers are primarily "facilitators" or to use Socrates' metaphor "midwives". It follows that philosophers are not authorities except on such historical details as Hume's living after, not before Aquinas, or the way philosophers use some words (eg "essential") more precisely than the general public.

Philosophy, then, is the reflective discussion of disputed questions, for the sake of understanding things. As such it does not require conventional academic ability, but instead a genuine willingness to think about issues, combined with a certain intellectual vitality.

Peter teaches in the areas of Epistemology (discussion of the standards for knowledge and belief) and Metaphysics (disputed questions about the nature of things). His chief research interests are in the areas of Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Religion. In spite of some rather obvious differences between Science and Religion, he holds that, in both cases, understanding is the guide to truth. His most recent book is God Without the Supernatural , which is part of the apparently old-fashioned project of apologetics, that is, showing how religious beliefs in general, and Christianity in particular, can meet the appropriate intellectual standards.

Peter's apologetic project can be likened to something else he does restoring an old house in Uralla, where he lives with his wife, Felicity and their children. The house was built as a school in 1867, and turned into a hospital this century, with the addition of a wooden maternity wing. Think of the house as like Christianity. There are some who would have considered it quite uninhabitable by today's standards. For a start who wants 250 square metres of maternity ward? So why not just knock it down? Others, of a more romantic bent, thought everything was just fine as it was, from the decaying wooden floors and the insanitary plumbing to the garden overgrown with brambles. What Felicity and he have tried to do is to have the house meet today's standards without doing violence to its history. Well, his apologetic project is just like that.