Thomas D. Carroll

@thomasdcarroll.bsky.social

381 Followers 268 Following

Associate Professor (Teaching) in Philosophy & Religious Studies at CUHK-Shenzhen I write on Wittgenstein, philosophy of religion, and comparative ethics. Sometimes, I post here about these things and music I like.

Photo of lanterns being hung around the campus of CUHK-Shenzhen

Table of Contents for Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion (Wiley, 2026)

Christmas tree on the campus of CUHK-Shenzhen

The Biennale theme

Image of Shao Fan's monumental painting of Kun

View of the Cao'an Temple from below

Shrine of Confucius at the Quanzhou Confucian Temple

Eastern Pagoda of the Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple in Quanzhou, China

Sign at Zhejiang University for the School of Philosophy (and History and Literature)

Cover for conference program for the Wittgenstein symposium in Hangzhou.

The Ken Vandermark Edition Redux performing at the OCT-Loft Jazz fest

Joe Fonda and Satoko Fugii performing at the OCT-Loft Jazz fest

After a showing of the Ken Vandermark documentary "Musician" (2007 -- by Daniel Kraus), Vandermark came forward for some Q&A.

View of heavy rains on the CUHK-Shenzhen campus

View of the lower campus of CUHK-Shenzhen just after sunset

View of the National Museum of African American History and Culture

Photo of Smithsonian display on Impeachment (2023)

Opening a box with my new book inside

Article abstract: Over the last couple of decades, philosophers have been drawing on ideas from Wittgenstein’s late work On Certainty in developing an approach to epistemology known as “hinge epistemology.” Hinge epistemology has been of particular interest to philosophers of religion because it considers the role that deep commitments to particular propositions may have within epistemic life, arguably mirroring what is seen in some religious traditions. The issue that motivates the present article is whether or to what extent it is helpful to think of forms of atheism as being grounded in hinge commitments. After considering various forms of atheism, this article advances the view that there are some forms of atheism that do exhibit core grounding commitments that may be helpfully interpreted as hinges. In developing this argument, the article considers two case studies of apparent atheistic hinges: the “secular faith” of Martin Hägglund and expressions of atheism one may find in contemporary Chinese society. While many atheistic beliefs are contingent upon still more fundamental epistemic commitments, some forms of atheism may be held strongly or with such a sense of import that interpretation by means of the notion of hinge commitment will be illuminating.

a photo of an apple on a plate

stained glass window from the Washington National Cathedral (from a few years ago)

Text reads: "I am told that it is SB1’s clause about graduation rates, and not those about DEI, that triggered the decision to end the philosophy major. It’s worth noting then, that the clause about graduation rates includes the following:

The chancellor may grant a waiver to a state institution for a program to which this division applies. State institutions shall appeal for a waiver in a form and manner determined by the chancellor. If the chancellor grants a waiver to a state institution, the chancellor shall establish terms under which the state institution may conditionally continue the program, including whether the program is eligible to be supported by state share of instruction funds.

So there may be a way to save the philosophy major at the University of Toledo, and the department is looking into possible avenues for that."

"The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society." -James Baldwin, "A Talk to Teachers"

This is the abstract for my forthcoming article in the journal Agatheos: “Wittgenstein, Religious Diversity, and Communicative Reticence”

Attempts to communicate across boundaries involving religions or cultures may fail before anything is asserted. While it is common in comparative philosophy of religion to focus on the compatibility or conflict between what is said by different interlocutors about
metaphysical commitments or ethical values, this article instead examines reticence. Reticence has many forms in connection with religious and philosophical traditions. These include eloquent silences, speech acts counseling care in language use, circumspection about
sharing ideas, declarations of inexpressibility, and political reticence. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Lectures on Religious Belief” and On Certainty as well as work by Alessandra Tanesini on silence and speech acts, this article considers communicative and epistemic aspects of diverse religious encounters that may give rise to varied reticent moments. The aim is to enhance thinking about inter-religious and cross-cultural discourses by exploring the ways in which reticent moments are salient, if frequently overlooked, aspects of complex communicative situations.

William Edmondson's "Crucifixion" (c1930-39)

Title for Ross Douthat's column promoting his new book on religion

Image of a low relief sculpture of a snake from a temple in Beijing

Photo of red lanterns on the campus of CUHK-Shenzhen during Chinese New Year

Cover for Rafael Anton Irisarri's album "Solastalgia"

Cover for William Basinski's "The Disintegration Loops"

Title page (proof) for my forthcoming book, Rethinking Philosophy of Religion with Wittgenstein

Cherry blossom trees in bloom on the campus of CUHK-Shenzhen

Cover for Godspeed You! Black Emperor's album "Yanqui U.X.O."

Photo of a colonnade looking out on Boston University's Marsh Plaza and "Free at Last" sculpture

Cover for Yo La Tengo's album, "I can hear the heart beating as one"

Cover for the Mo'Wax compilation album, "Headz 2A"

Cover for Massive Attack's album, "Protection"

Cover for the Keith Jarrett Trio's album "The Cure"

Cover for A Tribe Called Quest's album "The Low End Theory"

Cover for Sonic Youth's album "Daydream Nation"

Cover for Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Orchestra's recording of John Adams's "Harmonielehre"

Cover for Shriekback album, "Care"

Cover for Bruce Springsteen's album, "Nebraska"

Cover for Gang of Four's album "Entertainment!"

Cover for Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" album

Cover for Steve Reich's composition, "Music for 18 Musicians"

Cover for The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue

screenshot of AQI readings

Cover for Brian Eno's "Ambient 1: Music for Airports"

Cover for David Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars"

Cover for John Coltrane's album, "A Love Supreme"

Cover of Sam Cooke's album "Live at the Harlem Square Club"

Cover for James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time

Cover for Fenggang Yang's book, Religion in China.

Cover for Kwame Anthony Appiah's book, Cosmopolitanism

Book cover for the Ames/Rosemont translation of the Analects.

Book cover for The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle by Richard Popkin

Cover for Tomoko Masuzawa’s The Invention of World Religions

The cover for Michael A. Sells's book, "Mystical Languages of Unsaying"

This screenshot of text reads: 'Chapter 4, “The Problem of Evil in Critical and Comparative Philosophy of Religion,” applies the contextually sensitive philosophical approach developed in the previous chapters to consider what is at stake in two recent uses of the problem of evil in expanding philosophy of religion. In particular, this chapter examines the work of Franklin Perkins in comparative exploration of problems of evil in classical Chinese philosophy (especially in Confucian and Daoist texts) and of Biko Mandela Gray in hermeneutically using the problem to critique narratives used to justify police violence against Black Americans. Approaching these cases with an eye to contexts of argumentation shows how the concept of family resemblances is helpful for making sense of the radically different philosophical projects across the broad field of philosophy. Rather than seeing these cases as varied forms of a common problem of evil, this chapter argues instead that the hermeneutical concerns animating both Perkins’s and Gray’s respective philosophical projects serve to remind philosophers generally of the value of metalevel attention to one’s own and others’ local contexts and existential purposes in doing philosophy of religion.'