Calling all Plantinga fans/readers (?!)
Plantinga is doing a lecture series at my university and I just went to the first one tonight…very impressive stuff.
Which of his books is the best read?
Why do you like him/dislike him?
Who are his most vitriolic opponents?
Is Quine an opponent by any chance?
Any feedback welcome…
Post stuff you picked up at the lecture if you can …
Could be difficult…I picked up quite alot.
Basically, Plantinga took apart the idea that evolutionary theories are incompatible with Christian belief. Very convincing. And he even seemed to satisfy the scientists present.
I append a link here to Plantinga’s own website:
The first of his books that I read was ‘God, Freedom, and Evil’. I though this was a great book, but it was very early on in my philosophical studies. But he does have a very interesting way of looking at things. Though I think any serious philosopher will dismiss his work, as its very difficult to do good philosophy when you already have an agenda about what the answer to your questions are. Meaning Philosophy sets out to find the answer from nothing, while theology already has the answer it’s just looking for the question. Well that should be, the question is rephrased in such a way that you end up with the answer you set out with in the first place. Doing things that way in my opinion, such as, any philosophy that has a prerequisite to find certain prosperity in it conclusion (i.e. in his God) is fundamentally flawed.
I do not think there is such a thing as an ‘agenda-less’ look at things. All perception is an informed one. It is the mind that sees and not the eye. No philosophising happens from a clean slate of mind, if ever such a state is possible at all. We need to have known to understand, not the other way around.
As an analogy, consider the present exploration of the Saturnian moon Titan. We cannot understand the sensory data gathered so far. A radar image of the surfaces of Venus or Mercury we can understand but not Titan’s. All our earthly experiences have not helped us imagined what the Titanian environment is like. I await eagerly Huygen’s descend into the Titanian atmosphere.
I doubt Quine gave Plantinga the time of day. If Quine did read him, though, I’d expect his reaction was something akin to Kant’s response to the scholastics…
Im with Chan on this one, Jonathan. Dont we all have an ‘agenda’ of sorts when we write? And is not Plantinga merely being honest about his?
This all ties back to the old postmodernist quibble about objectivity. The arguments propounded mean that attempting to ‘do philosophy’ from a coolly neutral, objective perspective is in fact perhaps a flawed dream!
eblaforum.org/library/philos … phi12.html
Here’s a link I was offered recently that might be elucidatory.
I know everything is subjective, but there are parts of our lives that overlap and a common ground that is experienced by all. In that area it’s possible to be somewhat objective, or maybe it might be more proper to called that phenomenon ‘Group Subjectivity’.
Philosophy is the love of wisdom if you want to be literal about the words meaning, so philosophers are those in search of wisdom, and one would assume that this would have to be through a process of investigation, as wisdom isn’t something you just magically have. So do philosophers at the outset know what answers they are going to find? Or are they just examining the facts until a picture emerges of the world, as they believe it to be. I think an honest philosopher will have to follow the second of these statements. The philosopher might even have set answers they wish to find, but when evidence exists or lack thereof they must be willing to change their views enlight of this discovery. Only then are they being honest to themselves in their quest for philosophical enlightenment. To reject the facts and still try to claim to be a philosopher is to skate on thin ice. Philosophy isn’t just about asking the deep questions, it’s about being able to examine details surround the subject of exanimation. Philosophy is of no use when you say something like the God exists because if he didn’t create the universe who did? That’s just one possible fact out of many that are available on that subject.
While were Plantinga work is concerned it’s very close to theology and I would class it as a form of theology in its efforts to justify a belief in god. That’s why I say he as an agenda, because there isn’t enough facts to prove that God exists, it’s almost to the contrary. With each new discovery God’s power over the world erodes. It’s not God’s power eroding but our understanding of how the world works is growing. To quote Polemarchus, ‘God is the grand total of our ignorance’. Some would say God exists to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the world, and as a figure of hope for those that our downtrodden. Even the idea of an infinite being in the confines of a finite universe doesn’t make any senses. As all the paradoxical questions attest to this, “If God is all powerful then surely he can create a Rock he can’t lift? But if he can’t lift it then he’s not all powerful.†This comes down to the idea of mixing the infinite with the finite. Something that mathematics can prove unfounded, as it’s very difficult to gain a meaningful answer from equations that have either Infinity or Zeros in them. This leads into the biggest philosophical question. How can the universe exist? A finite universe (approximately 15 billon years old) must have a beginning when viewed from the vantage point of absolute existence, which can be imagined before the universe’s existence, i.e. what was before the big bang? Enter possibly God’s most potent ally as factual evidence of his existence, while the second would most lightly be the Perceived Order in the universe. This second fact ‘Perceived Order’ is under threat from the idea of Darwinism and more recently the works of Dawkins on the concepts of Self Gene and selection of the survival of the fittest from the different groups of mutated germ lines both intra-supra species. Here again knowledge starts to undermine Gods existence.
The problem for Plantinga is the torrent of propositions that undermine his position almost grows exponentially. While the propositions that he can use to defend his position is demising at a similar rate. I see his philosophical struggle as one who has an answer and is unwilling to change their mind, yet still go about trying to make others believe their worldview. Reminds me of Logical Positivism of the 60s that has run its course and is now dead. Therefore I class his works as those of a theological agenda and not one of philosophical honestly.
Well, there are counter-answers to all your points. Plantinga provides some. I might provide some too! To take one example briefly, the Darwinism quibble doesnt stand up to close scrutiny…this was the subject of the lecture on Monday…which amounted to a deconstruction of Dawkins which revealed there was a mere metaphysical underpinning in Dawkins’ fundamental conjectures about God and the likelihood of his existence. I have the arguments on a handout and I will deal more with this and other spurious claims in your post when I have a bit more time.
Meanwhile, I’d advise you to rethink some of your positions briefy before I subject them to some scrutiny.
For example:
a) God and omnipotence/infinity…are these categories mutually exclusive?
b) God’s existence is not something which I have seen Plantinga deal with in my experience of his work: rather, he concentrates on deconstructing/threatening the arguments of those who claim we should know better than to claim that he doesnt. There is an obvious difference here.
c) Only ‘strong Darwinism’ threatens ‘perceived order’ as you put it as Plantinga showed on Mon. ‘Weak Darwinism’ on the other hand, does not threaten Christian/theistic conceptions of God. There is a 0.5 likelihood of each: therefore, neither is more likely than the other and thus the position of Darwinism is totally ambiguous insofar as its ability to discredit theism is concerned. And of the 6 main evolutionary theories, only ‘strong Darwinism’ provides an oppositional argument to the notion of God’s existence. The other 5 dont.
d) Well, the problem with your classification of PLantinga’s work as theological is that he a formally trained logician, housed in a philosophy department, who concentrates on scrutinizing the opinions of others. In any case, are the philosophy/theology/literature/history/oriental studies/mathematics/sociology/anthropology clear anyway and do they need to be???
You yourself defined philosophy as a love of wisdom, antequated, poetic, and cliched as this may be, it doesnt exactly your purported attempts to set up boundaries between those who love wisdom and those who dont.
e) I cant say anything of Plantinga’s that I’ve encountered contradicts what you’ve said about how youo see ‘philosophy’ anyway!
More to come…
I look forward to this, as I’m very interested in counter arguments against both Darwinism and Dawkins ideas. Because I believe the latter of these ideas is very promising when taken in conjunction with mathematical ideas like Game Theory played out in computer simulation, as there are some AI projects using those theories as the basis of genetic algorithms for neural-net learning, which have made some progress. But of course they’re still a long way off, as the process of evolution revolves around there being a large number of iterations of the Birth, Selection Process, and Death cycle. But these ideas are being used to drive our stock markets and I have a good friend in New York who makes a pretty penny off the predictability inherent in these ideas. Or what could be called the manipulation for of the markets through the use of tailored forecast designed to make the general public perceive a profit is to be had in a certain sector, which his company many have a portfolio it wishes to relieve itself of.
I don’t believe such a being is possible as would be described by the Christian faith. But I did at one point in my life, as I spend 15 months preparing to be a catholic priest, of which time about 4 months was spend in a seminary studying my then faith. I still see there being a possible Creator, but I wouldn’t attribute most of the characteristics that are ascribed to the common notion of God. Omnipotence and infinite are two things I would say this Creator is not. His “powers†are finite in nature, yet still great enough to create us. So to answer your question directly I would say yes, because when trying to deal with infinity in the confines of a finite space it becomes impossible to cope with things that would require infinite precision, as there will always have to be a margin for error, like when you do maths that has decimal places. There are only so many decimals you can calculate within a given timeframe, an example would be Pi. This can be calculated to any length, but we still don’t know what the complete number is, we just stop after we have calculated to the required number of decimal places that will solve the algorithm at hand.
But I haven’t seen any work of his that sets out to prove Gods non-existence, or help to improve the proposition that undermine Gods existence. (I’ll further this point below).
I’ll need to lookup the idea of ‘strong Darwinism’ Vs ‘Weak Darwinism’. To see what the exact differences are.
Aquinas’ work would be considered philosophy by some, but I’m not one of them. I just stated my opinion on what I choose to call Plantinga’s work. If he was a confessed agnostic then I would find his work closer to Philosophy then Theology, but last I checked he was a Calvinist. This is why I say his work is tainted with an agenda.
Haha, clichéd, you sound like a Literary Arts Major! Most ideas are old ideas and anyone who looks back at the history of philosophy will see that it’s now all just one big cliché. Philosophy in many of its derived forms has run it’s course (metaphysics for example is replaced by pure physic) and most of the large philosophical questions have been replaced by the advances made in the sciences, which once would have been called Natural Philosophy back in days gone bye. Theology is a branch of Philosophy that deals with concepts like God. So yes he is practicing philosophy, but like I still believe, philosophy with an agenda about the nature of God by countering the arguments which try to prove his non-existence. If he put forward ideas about why god doesn’t exist then I wouldn’t see an agenda in his studies, as he would be taking a balanced look at the question in hand. But the last time I check it was all about the ‘Warrant’ for why God is a valid possibility. Again I haven’t found an argument that can prove God doesn’t exist, just ones that show the necessity of such a being is not required to answer philosophical questions. But I do find it now implausible that a God as described by the Christian faith can exist, not because it’s impossible, but because I feel the there is more circumstantial evidence that when combined with Logic undermine the position of Christianity’s notion of God.
Gavtmcc, most lectures are about peddling books, which one of his current works is he suggesting you study? Or would be a good companion to his lecture series? As I’m interested in reading it to see how his ideas might have evolved since the last of his works I read. Again any good arguments that undermine Dawkins revised Darwinism interests me, as personally I think that avenue of study is currently making the most progress answering some of the deep philosophical questions. But not necessarily in a format that would be describe as classical philosophy, but neophilosophy as it’s express through scientific progress.
This might be of interest to those following the topic:
I think Plantinga’s approach to theism as a ‘proper basic belief’ is unnecessary and entirely unprogressive.
We can possibly classify philosophy into two branches, namely one in which there is a necessity for a conception called god in their fundamental tenents, call this theistic philosophies, and the other that do not require such at all, call it non-theistic philosophies. For example, Descarte’s philosophy needs the notion of God, so would Kant and Berkeley. Hume probably do not need it.
But the god in theistic philosophies is really just an empty crutch of sorts. It is really a god-of-the-gaps. Its true name is Ignorance. To attribute the First Cause or the Mind of the Universe to god is not really saying anything. We can just as well label it ‘The Force’ or ‘Mother’ or ‘Qi’ or ‘Eternal Mystery’ or ‘Chance’ or whatever. It does not reveal any new knowledge or understanding.
And just as there is weak and strong Darwinism, so there is also a weak and strong theism. Platinga’s theism is a weak theism in that he has to resort to the notion of ‘proper basic belief’ to justify it. And rightly so it can be deemed feidistic. And it is still no different from the philosophical god call Ignorance.
The stong version, or at least my notion of a strong theistic philosophy, is one that do not need to introduce a new ‘proper basic belief’ nor need to depart from classical foundationalism. And this is the evidence of Jesus Christ. In other words strong theistic philosophy is that for which the God is not just any god and certainly not a god-of-the-gap but rather Yahweh, and specifically as evidenced and revealed by Jesus Christ. And the evidential validity of Jesus Christ is the same as the validity of any historical person and event, just as you can think of Plato-ism as being built upon the evidence of the thoughts and reasoning of Plato and Socrates.
Maybe you call the philosophy Yahwehism. Perhaps it can be called Christianity, but I rather not for all the baggages, historical or otherwise, associated with the latter term.
The only charge I can hear is that I may be chauvinistic is promoting one God over another. This should not be a problem. We can create as many strong theistic philosophies as there are gods as long as there are evidences for who these gods are and in a knowable way, without contradicting classical foundationalism, and that they are not merely labels without meaning.
The Analytic Theist is a good collection of several of his esays, somewhat abridged. That and the Warrant series are probably the most important books of his, I would say.
Is the implication here that philosophers that argue for atheism all start their careers as agnostics, and somewhere along the lines surprise themselves with their discoveries?
PLantinga’s approach, and what he encourages from others, is for Christians to do philosophy as Christians- that is, to allow their Christianity to inform their philosophy. The reason for this is two-fold:
1.) There are plenty of Christians who are interested in philosophy, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to discuss issues other than the justification of their faith.
2.) Atheism hasn’t established itself as fact strongly enough that a Christian philosopher ought to approach every issue in the same way an atheist would approach it.
Plantinga has an essay called “Advice to Christian Philosophers in the 21st century” (or something like that) that explains these points.
Considering that theistic philosophies can wildly differ one to another, I don’t see how a statement like this can possibly be useful.
I think a lot of those Atheist people, have a problem with the formal religions that they grew-up with and of the stupid things that are associated with it (to them). In essence instead of religion inspiring faith it created apathy or disillusionment. Because they see fundamental flaws in the framework of the religion, in it’s ideas and beliefs that don’t make senses in the context of their life’s experiences.
I do feel that Atheism is just as misguided, as they’re also jumping to a conclusion; they’re allowing their beliefs answer their philosophical questions, and not the facts. This is what Theology is also doing.
I would say that this point is misstated, as they are just looking at Atheism and not at all those who don’t believe in any of the other formal religions. I think the number of true Atheist is actually quite small. Most people I would say are closer to Agonist bordering on belief in a God, but lack a way to express this belief, as there is no religion that caters to their belief in a fashion that makes senses to them. To me there are three groups of people that a Christian Philosophy must deal with, and when their numbers are combined is quite large. These are as follows: Atheist, Agonists, and those that believe in a higher power but don’t have anyway of grouping themselves together in some labelled title.
The increase in fad religions shows that a large number of people see and want such a being to exist; the problem arises not with, “Is there a Godâ€, but the attributes that are ascribed to him by religion. It’s the ideas and frameworks contained in the formal religions that are being attacked and undermined, not the existence of a God. The problem is people closely associated with those religions can’t differentiate between the two as to them their religion is their god. To undermine one is to undermine the other.
Take Evil, evil’s existence in itself isn’t a problem. It only becomes a problem when you say something like God is all-powerful and benevolent. Now evil poses a problem, as we’ve made it one by saying something that the world around us doesn’t reflect, as we can see Evil everywhere. Now to people who are only willing to view God as benevolent, this is a problem. But for others they simply say, “Well maybe God isn’t all-powerful, or he isn’t benevolent?†What philosophers should be attacking isn’t God, as this is still an open question, but facts surrounding him and the attributes we ascribe that we can see are untrue based off our understand of the world. The Atheist makes a similar mistake; they see one wrong religion as a reason for of all of them to be wrong, they simply throughout the baby with the bath water, instead of examining the concepts of God from a position untangled by the views of the formal religions, i.e. a clean slate.
A religion that either believes one book is complete truth or that some person has clairvoyance enough to be infallible and still call themselves a philosopher is not mixing business with pleasure. There’s no point being a philosopher from 9-5 and then on Sundays being a Christian while knowing the notions contained in the religion you’re practicing don’t make sense.
It sounds like you’re saying, then, that atheistic philosophers come to the table with as much bias as you accuse Plantinga of. I would agree, of course.
I can see that, but my feeling on this is that I can't see anybody caring enough about issues to actually become a philosopher, without having some issue they feel strongly about, which will in turn color their research. Maybe it's my post-modern upbringing talking, but when I hear someone claim to be unbaised, I immediately suspect a hidden bias.
You're right, I'm presenting Christianity and Atheism as the only two alternatives, which is obviously not the case. :slight_smile: What I mean to say is, there are enough Christians out there that a philosopher can use their Christianity to inform their research, and come out with informed choices that are meaningful to many people. If a Christian philosopher must justify their faith to everyone's satisfaction before they can work on anything else (at least, without pretending to be atheists), they'll never go beyond apologetics. Plantinga is suggesting that Christian philosophers not be afraid to move on from that- I don't think he's said anything to effect that apologetics don't have their place, however.
I think you’re applying to much sophistication to the fad religions: I don’t think a genuine criticism of articles of the Christian faith are behind them at all, I think it’s a more general rejection of authority, and an adoption of a new set of moral values that’s causing the split. I highly doubt the average New-Age type could explain what it is they don’t like about the Apostle’s Creed.
This amounts to the same thing though, doesn’t it? Which (or how many) alleged qualities of God can you discount or replace, before what you’re talking about isn’t reasonable to call God anymore? For example, wouldn’t it be misleading to say “I believe in God, I just don’t think He’s all-powerful, good, immaterial, or a person”?
The problem I've always had with the notion of the philosopher designing their own God without contribution of religion is that it's the claims of religion that give cause to the search for God in the first place. God (depending on how much wiggle-room you allow to tweak the concept) is completely unnessicary as an explanation for why the universe exists, or the origins of the human mind. An honest "I don't know" will always be suffecient. A philosopher's God, in other words, risks being a God of the gaps.
On the other hand, if we accept the body of religious experience (the power of prayer, claims to miracles, the very common experience people report of 'God speaking to them' or 'God (dis)approving of what they do') as the core reason why investigation into theism is worthwhile, then theism has a starting point. But those experiences can only be evaulated in the context of the religions in which they occur. Dealing seriously with this immense body of religious experience also does away quite nicely with the atheist claims of a 'lack of evidence', which ought to be an important consideration to any theistic philosopher.
True. But most people think with what would be best called emotional intelligence. Things either feel right or they don’t. Not everybody has the mental ability to study philosophy. I’m not saying you need to be cleaver just you need to have patience, perseverance and willingness to learn. Even some cleaver people don’t get what they could get out of philosophy simply because they lack the openness required to learn new ideas.
True, but there’s no point studying philosophy if you’re unwilling to learn from it. I started reading philosophy because I couldn’t understand why people didn’t believe in God. I find it funny at an intellectual level that what I was hoping to fix in others end up happening to me on the search for their cure. I went in with a biased view and came out with a more opened mind, not unbiased just more open.
True, there is always a motive and bias. But you have to try and control them if you want to make personal progress. Otherwise you’ll just end up trapped in your own fundamental worldview. Meaning you’ll limit yourself by not questioning the beliefs you hold as true. I love things that threaten my views on the world (Socrates said your best friend is the one who points out your flaws), as I know these are things that will make me grow as a philosopher and a person. Yes they will cause mental anguish, but that’s just birth pangs! The thing I notice most when I was studying philosophy in the seminary was that certain ideas just couldn’t be discussed with some people as it affected them so much you just had to drop the subject. Their own perspective on the world require a certain view, and to threat this view was to undermine everything the believed in or required to function. Of course they wouldn’t see it this way, to them I was just trying to wind them up. So a phase emerged, “Your in my comfort zone.†Which meant it was time to stop developing an idea.
You’ve touched on one of my points from the last post. It’s not God being limited, but only how you’re willing to view God.
Why not??? Who said God must be this way? For me “God†wouldn’t be the title I’d use to describe what I believe any. I believe in the possibility of a Creator. There are no rules to speak of. I’m just like him in the fact I have the power to create, but what I choose to create is up to me. As for morality it comes down to “Treat others as you would like to be treatedâ€, which is just the golden rule of all moral systems and something I impose on myself and is not imposed by my Creator. I choose my own way without guidance, as I trust my reason to guide me, which in essence was given to me by him. For that reason I must always keep myself informed on subject matters so I can use my reason in a responsible fashion. That’s what I choose to believe in outside of what I have philosophical proof for. But philosophy did help me come to that belief through the use of Reason. If anything I would call Reason my God.
True, God is the grand-total of our ignorance. But there is a difference between stubborn ignorance that doesn’t wish to learn and those who are will & open to fill in this gap when the relevant information is made present. Like you said there are phenomenon in this world that are classed as otherworldly. Which always begs the question if God is there, why isn’t he more open with us? Why must we go on little scraps of almost hearsay evidence? Some say he doesn’t want to interfere, well looking back at the history of religion some would say he’s committed the Sin of Omission or even incited violence by his unwillingness to set the record straight. But again there is no hard and fast answer to this question.
This is true, and I’m happy with that. My point was just that when when ‘emotional intelligence’ types drift away from traditional religion, it doesn’t mean that traditional religion has gone wrong somewhere.
My point was linguistic, not religious. Suppose I say ‘I believe in God’, and when I say ‘God’ I mean ‘The Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.’. Your statements
differ just as radically from the ‘traditional’ concept as my hypothetical, and I submit that both do the audience a disservice in the confusion they cause (or would cause, were you to refer to yourself as a theist, which I don’t know that you do). The overall point here, is that when you’ve altered the concept enough, it’s only considerate to choose a different word to represent your new concept.
To the extend that we’re referring to a basic traditional concept of God, that is, some sort of powerful, good Person responsible for the creation of the Universe, I believe the historical, experiential and dogmatic claims of religions are important to the discussion. I am not familiar with this thing which you are calling God, nor am I clear yet on the reason for supposing or discussing it.
To bring this in to the topic of Plantinga, he is comfortable refering to demonic agency or Calvin’s sensus divinitatus when discussing things like the Problem of Evil or the existence of God, and I think the reason why is that he rejects the idea of ‘philosophical theism’ bottled seperately from the religions that preserved the concept for us, and he especially rejects the implicit demand that Christians bottle it that way.
I wouldn’t call myself a theist as I’m an agnostic. All I was demonstrating by the above remark about what I call God is that there is more then one way to interpret what God is. As many religions assign there gods with difference attributes, so when talking about “a God†in general this no such thing, as god is always viewed from some religious perspective. Take the Greco-Roman views on the pantheon of Gods.
God, when detached from religion is just a notion that has some of the characteristics you have mentioned. But unless you’re describing the God from your religion most peoples’ views on God will be different to your own.
I think my central problem with this is, if we’re using philosophy and not religion as a starting point, then what standards must the concepts we are developing meet before it’s appropriate to label them ‘God’? There must be some standard, or else language breaks down.
And for you these are?