Jamie's new book is out. It's called How do we Know? -- an updated edition from its original release. And this week, Joe talks to Jamie about what's new. Here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/How-Know-Questions-Christian-Philosophy/dp/0830855122/
Jamie Dew: Hey everybody. This is Jamie Dew.
Joe Fontenot: And I'm Joe Fontenot.
Jamie Dew: Welcome back once again to our podcast, the Towel in the Basin.
Joe Fontenot: So this is kind of a special episode, just because typically we talk about various things, a listener will write a question and we'll discuss that, or maybe we talk about your research, Jamie. This is a little different because we're actually talking about a book that you wrote that has just come out. As when this podcast is released, this book will already be out. And that book is called, How Do We Know? So Jamie, I have a question now. This is not the first time you wrote this book, this is the second edition. Why did you write a second edition?
Jamie Dew: Yeah. So I guess maybe you don't do it right the first time and you try to do it again.
Joe Fontenot: Can't win them all.
Jamie Dew: This is actually the first out of... Early, early in my career, partnering with Mark Foreman. This is a book that I wanted to do. It was born out of classes that I was teaching and that he was teaching and it was just always a book that I wanted to do. And so it was early, early in my career when I wrote this book and looking back on it, I'm super fortunate to have had the opportunity to do it in the first place, because this was really, I guess you can say my first foot in the door. And for years, I don't know what people envision about these processes and such, but I can tell you as a young, academic trying to go around and get myself published, which is something you have to do to be able to survive in that industry.
It was just, I was finding it impossible. I mean, for years, six or seven years, I would go to these conferences where all these publishers were going to be and I'd present my ideas. And they just kind of pat me on the head, like, "Oh, that's a cute idea, Sonny," and send me on my way. And I just never could get any traction. And so that was the experience for years and years and years. And this was really the first opportunity when we did the first volume of this, the first version of this. It was the first opportunity I had to do anything of substance like that. And so I was excited about that in the life of the first edition. It had a great lifespan. It was picked up by a couple of bigger Christian universities and it was used fairly widely.
It sold way, way better than I ever hoped or dreamed it could. And I was very fortunate in that regard. However, it was written very early in my career and where all of us have different things that we're good at or not so good at, one of the things I've always felt, and just the feedback I've gotten throughout my ministry speaking or writing that I tend to do fairly well, is translate the Academy to the [inaudible 00:03:11] and it's something that the academicians are grinding through and be able to sort of translate that to common folks and just say, "Look, here's what they're saying." And I think in, as I look back, as my career went on, there were a lot of aspects of the first edition where I felt like we did that really well. But because it was written so early in my career, there were at the same time, there was a couple areas where we did not... Sorry, my phone was ringing there. There are a couple of aspects or a couple issues in the field of epistemology that we didn't even speak to.
And there were a couple parts of the book that I just really did not feel like were as strong as they needed to be or as clear as they needed to be, or just maybe a little muddled or something like that. So the book sold really well and I was fortunate in that regard. And so then about, I guess it was about three years ago, I was at a conference. I was having breakfast one morning with my editor at IVP, which after you publish a book like this or something like that, now anytime you get to go to these conferences, you tend to catch up with these folks and have a lunch or a breakfast or something. And I was sitting there at breakfast with David McNutt at IVP, and we were just dreaming about other possibilities of books we could do.
IVP had, had, still has, this philosophy series called Contours in Philosophy. And it was a wonderful series, wonderful series, but it was a bit dated. And I just said, "You know what? We really need is a new series. Not that that other series doesn't make a valuable contribution, it absolutely does. However, there's a lot that's happened in philosophy over the last 20 to 30 years since then. And we really need some volumes on these major aspects of philosophy, the major heads of philosophy, like epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of minds and logic and things like that. We need something. We need volumes now that are up to date." And there's really not a series in any of the evangelical prints where that exists. And so what I had envisioned at that time was, "Hey, what if we just do a new series?"
And that struck IVP as valuable and interesting. And so that conversation went on for a couple years and then as it evolved, so too did the idea of, "Hey, and by the way, we could do a second edition of this introductory volume to epistemology, and that could be included in the new series." And so that's how it all happened. And so I went back to Mark and said, "Hey Mark, would you be up for doing... Let's do a revised version of the book." And he was on board and IVP was on board and it gave... I was excited about it because it gave an opportunity for me to sort of shore up some places in the first volume where I really just did not feel like it was as clear as it needed to be, or as helpful as it needed to be. And it gave me the opportunity to add a new chapter to it as well. So yeah-
Joe Fontenot: I was going to ask-
Jamie Dew: It was just a great opportunity to do it.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask about the new chapter. So there's a new chapter eight, Can We be Objective in our View of the World? This was not in the first one. Was this topic discussed in the first one at all, or how did this get put in here?
Jamie Dew: It was not in the first one at all. But about four years after the publication of the first edition, I participated in a book with Stewrt Kelly on Understanding Postmodernism. And I wrote a chapter for that book there on objectivity and subjectivity. And I mean, we're responding to postmodernism in that book. And while it's an issue that comes up most often in the discussions about postmodernity, it is still a deeply, deeply, deeply epistemological issue. And so I just really felt like, "Man, if I ever had the chance to do a second edition, I would want to add a shorter, smaller chapter." So it covers much of the same terrain in those two chapters, the one in this new book and the one in the Understanding Postmodernism book. The understanding post-modernism chapter though is about twice the size of the chapter in this book, where basically here, I just give a shorter version of that same discussion where I just cover the history of this question.
And this is seriously important for epistemologically, as we think about one, the history of philosophy and epistemology. But as we think specifically about the developments of modernity and post-modernity, if you want to try to understand how those two approaches different from each other and were similar to each other, this is an important question. But then it's also really important as we think about modern day hermeneutics as well, because I think, you just watch any of the debates that people have on Twitter. There's always this sort of attack that people make on others where it's like, "Well, you're just not reading the text." And I mean, certainly there are passages are super crystal clear and then there are certain passages that my gosh, very serious respectable scholars take very different perspectives on things before.
And so, what's the difference there? If they're reading the same text with the same backgrounds and all those things from the text, what's driving those differences? And so questions about objectivity and subjectivity are I think, seriously important for both, not just our discussions about historical philosophy, but even for epistemology today. And ultimately what I do in both of those chapters is I simply tell the story of how that whole question evolved and developed and then provide what I think to be are some very reasonable push backs against post-modern philosophy and its denial of objectivity, in short, [inaudible 00:09:05].
Joe Fontenot: Okay. So you've clearly added a chapter, chapter eight, which you were just talking about. Is there anything else that you've added to the other chapters and stuff, the content of the book you talked about, maybe just shoring up some ideas that earlier in your career, you've sort of have maybe a more mature view on now or something like that. What else is different in the book?
Jamie Dew: So a couple of things. Number one, I never really felt like some of my discussions in early chapters, especially things like what is knowledge. There were some aspects of that chapter that as I read back through it years going by, just really felt like it was probably a little sloppier than I would want it to be now. I mean, understandable for that point in my career. Here's the thing, five years from now, or 10 years from now, I'm probably going to look back again and go, "Gosh, it's still so sloppy." That's the price of growing older and rooting more and thinking more and having more conversations. And these are ongoing discussions that you begin to realize and you sharpen up. Lord willing, I should always be, we should always be increasing in our ability to be as concise as we possibly can.
So yeah, there were things in chapter two that I thought were not great in terms of some possible responses to some problems related to knowledge. For now what's in chapter seven, the chapter on justification. Looking back on that one, I certainly felt like my treatment of various distinctions in the field were just not what they needed to be. And so what we did is we ended up making in this new second edition a much, I think, clearer distinction between two different approaches to justification, one view called internalism, another view called externalism and then doing, I think a much better job the second time around, of giving some clear examples of different approaches to both internalism And externalism that I think it should just probably make it a lot clearer to the reader, "Oh, that's what you mean."
So, stuff like that. And by the way, those are really important, really important issues in epistemology. If you don't get those right, you're just not doing a whole lot. I had written two years ago, I guess it was, it was published maybe a little less than that. I had co-authored a book with Paul Gould called Philosophy of Christian Introduction with Baker. And he wrote the majority of the metaphysics, I wrote the majority of the epistemology sections and there I wrote that as a much, I'll say much, a good bit older philosopher, a lot more seasoned, and I felt much more confident about the chapters I'd written there in epistemology as opposed to this one. And so questions about justification and reformed epistemology, and all of those things were really important to make sure that we tried to get right. And so I feel much better now about what we've done in the second edition.
Joe Fontenot: That's cool. Is there anything that you particularly just really enjoyed writing about this one that you didn't have in the other one?
Jamie Dew: Yeah. I didn't feel any pressure this time around like I did the first time. I mean, I had felt pressure related to timelines in the first one. I felt pressure in terms of, now this is the first thing I've ever going to say in published form. I felt all those weights back then. And it's not that I took it lightly, but I guess I just didn't have those pressures this time. For me, it was a much more joyful opportunity this time around that, "Hey, how blessed am I to be at a place in my career where there's a book that's done fairly well. And that I now have the opportunity to sharpen it a bit or strengthen it, or even clean it up in some ways." And anytime I have the leisure to write on things like this, it's invigorating to me.
So actually the chapter that I wrote and the majority of the revisions that I did in this book, I did during the month of my inauguration here. So I was inaugurated and I don't remember which day, but it was late in January. I basically came back from Christmas break and all I did for the month of January was write and rework. And so heading into an event that I found stressful, this was fun for me. This was a nice little reprieve to just sit and to think and to do some research again. And that's not an opportunity that sitting in my seat, I get a lot of opportunities to do. I'm somewhat envious and jealous of my friends who are faculty members and that they get to read books and they get to write and stuff like that. I don't get to do a lot from my seat today, so this was fun.
Joe Fontenot: Well, that's great. This looks like a great book. It's called for everybody listening, it's called, How Do We Know? And you can get it at IVPpress.com. Just go to IVPpress.com, just search for James K. Dew, or go to IVPpress.com/how-do-we-know, those go with hyphens. And you could also find it on Amazon. Release date is November 17th and we are recording this before then, but when this goes out, it will already be live and so you can find it online.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. And just real quick, anything I've ever written that people, because I go by Jamie and everybody only knows me as Jamie, when they go to Amazon, if they type in Jamie Dew, you're going to find nothing. Anything that I've ever written has always under my actual name, James K. Dew, Jr., and you can find stuff that way. This is part of a new series, though, I'm super excited about this, I'm pumped about this. Let me just give a plug for the series Hold, that's coming out. We have myself and Paul Franks, who's a philosopher lives in Canada, young, just a super sharp, awesome guy that I get to be... The two of us are co-editing this series with IVP. And it's the name of the series is called Questions in Christian Philosophy.
And so there's the volume that I've gotten to do with Mark Foreman on epistemology. How Do We Know is not an apologetics book, it's more of an introduction to epistemology, it's the questions, well, what is knowing? And then we've got one on metaphysics coming, one on philosophy of mind coming, one on logic that's coming, and one on aesthetics as well. So super exciting to be a part of that. And that's a project that'll probably be, the next 10 years, we'll be working on this project.
Joe Fontenot: Hey, that's great. Very cool. All right. Well, thanks so much, Jamie, for taking us through this new edition.
Jamie Dew: You bet. Thanks man.
Joe Fontenot: Hey everybody, this is Jamie and Joe again. If you like this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts, that helps other people find it.
Jamie Dew: And if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them. Just go to Jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way, and we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.