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What Is Alvin Plantinga Talking About? An Introduction to the Preeminent Christian Philosopher of Our Time
Alvin Plantinga is important. Even if he were never right about anything, he’d still be important because hundreds of thousands (or millions) think he’s important.
But that’s where the similarities to Joe Biden end.
Unlike Biden, Plantinga is actually right about a lot of things.
Those many, many people who think he matters, they agree with him, disagree with him, follow him, oppose him, love him, and hate him. But mostly they talk about him, and usually they misunderstand him.
That’s what it means to be a great philosopher.
I am not one of the great philosophers, but I can explain them sometimes. So here’s what Plantinga is talking about in as few words as I can manage.
Some things can be known without relying on evidence from other things we know. Those are the properly basic beliefs (PBBs). All evidence has to come from somewhere, and PBBs are where it comes from.
Not just any belief can be a PBB. It has to be one we can know in some way other than through evidence from other things we know.
And — surprise! — Plantinga thinks belief in G-d can be a PBB.
But how do we know which things can be in the category of PBBs? Plantinga borrows from Roderick Chisholm‘s advice for figuring out something like this: First, make a nice list of beliefs we know fit into a particular category of beliefs; next, carefully look at the beliefs in that list to figure out a criterion for beliefs in that category; finally, use that criterion to see whatever other beliefs might fit into that category.
Plantinga gets his list of PPBs from common-sense beliefs, drawing from Thomas Reid (whom you can meet on Ricochet here). Then there’s some inductive logic to get to the criterion (summarized here on Ricochet and here off Ricochet). And then there’s an explanation of why Plantinga thinks Christian belief meets that criterion.
It took Plantinga more than three decades and well over a thousand pages to do all this. But he eventually did it, and it’s some pretty awesome philosophy.
I have an introduction to this coming out in Criswell Theological Review before the year is up.
And here’s “The Philosophers in Their Own Words,” a YouTube playlist where I’ve recorded some introductions to Plantinga’s writings on the subject. Expect a new video in this series each Monday till sometime in December. Here are the first two.
Published in General
Which analogy are you referring to?
1. Not a problem. Just read people like C. S. Lewis who did it for you, and you’ll get what you need.
2. Thanks!
3. Luck or providence, I guess.
Not exactly but close, no, and no.
In the opening post I only summarize Plantinga’s strategy and the final phase of the project. But his project actually has three phases.
Phase 1 is G-d and Other Minds (the first video in the post). In Phase 2 (several videos in this series, starting with the second video in the post), Plantinga makes the following point:
Self-evidence is not the only way something can be a PBB.
It’s not self-evident that I’ve only had two cups of tea so far today, but it’s a PBB for me because my memories about it are pretty reliable. Plantinga wouldn’t say that other minds are self-evident either–or belief in G-d. Now those circumstances in which we realize they exist are super-important, but they don’t make a belief self-evident. They’re just the conditions in which the belief happens in some other way.
But in what way?
It took Plantinga (roughly) from 1979 till 1993 to answer that question, but you can skip to the end by clicking on the link to the answer, given here in the opening post: “Then there’s some inductive logic to get to the criterion (summarized here on Ricochet and here off Ricochet).”
Did I say “inshallah” again? You know, it probably turns up in an least one Arabic translation of the New Testament letter of James.
Yeah, the way HR states it is precisely the opposite of Plantinga’s argument.
A typo was located, and everything’s cool now.
I went ahead and edited my typo with a strike through and a correction. My bad.
One thing I was thinking of about this “other minds exist” and “God’s mind exists” thought process is this:
What about polytheism? If I remember correctly, there are some arguments that some people make in favor of monotheism over polytheism. But there are some advantages of polytheism.
For example, the problem of evil isn’t really a problem under polytheism if at least one of the gods is an evil god.
So, I suppose the Hindus, who are polytheists, could take Plantinga’s argument and use it to support their multitude of gods. They could say, “Just as I am justified in believing that I have a mind and Fred has a mind and Alice has a mind, I am also justified in believing that there are various gods, each with a mind.
If this is the case, doesn’t this expose a weakness in Plantinga’s argument in the sense that it leaves the nature of God/gods very much open? After all, the Mormons, the Muslims, the Hindus and host of other religious sects might take Plantinga’s argument and run with it.
Perhaps if there is a Thomist amongst us he/she should explain divine simplicity and why there’s only 1 God, not 78 gods.
And let’s not even get into whether God will damn you to hell for eating with the wrong fork!
We’d better pause here and look around before taking any more steps in the wrong direction.
What thought process are you talking about?
Do you think he’s arguing that G-d’s mind exists because human minds exist or something like that?
That’s not his argument. Not even close. It doesn’t even have the same conclusion: The argument in G-d and Other Minds is not that G-d exists.
Let me rephrase:
Could Plantiga’s epistemology be used by polytheists? Perhaps someone could say that their belief in 78 gods is a Properly Basic Belief (PBB)?
No.
But let me restate: What thought process are you talking about?
At 1:12 in the first video in the original post:
So, could this same line of reasoning be changed slightly, as follows, in support of polytheism?
If the reasoning behind Statement 1 is sound, is the reasoning behind Statement 2 also sound?
Oh, thank goodness. So the answer to my question must be “No.”
Ok, this is from the end of G-d and Other Minds.
We’d do better to say “solid” than “sound” since “sound” is a technical term in logic.
But to answer the question directly:
Based on what little I can both understand and remember from G-d and Other Minds, that particular book does not give us reasons to say that the reasoning behind Statement 2 is not solid.
However, G-d and Other Minds was only Phase 1, and the particularism is very rudimentary. I’m pretty sure that strategy is not going to work easily in response to Plantinga’s Phase 2. It’ll be darn near impossible in response to his Phase 3.
The answer to your question is “No” and that’s why I rephrased my question in the form above.
Yeah, I just needed a moment to type and stuff.
Here, I think I am in agreement with HR.
I can actually see other people, hear them speak and physicians can analyze their brain activity. But I don’t see God; I don’t hear God and physicians can’t analyze the God’s brain/mind, if he has one.
So, it seems like on first examination, I disagree with Plantiga’s statement as quoted above.
Do we need evidence for belief in other minds to be rational?
I think so. I think the evidence for believing in the existence of other minds is based on our interactions with people. We can see peoples’ movements, hear their words, hear them respond to our questions and so on.
Is this bulletproof evidence that other minds exist? No. But it’s evidence that is strong enough to justify believing that other minds exist.
Regarding God, I can’t see God and I can’t hear God. I have no way of knowing if God hears me if I attempt to speak to him. So, that, I think, is the justification for rejecting Plantiga’s statement (which I titled “Statement 1”).
I don’t.
Why call that evidence? We don’t know it’s people we’re interacting with unless we already know that there are other minds there.
You can always try the argument from analogy to one’s own mind, of course. Maybe the argument works. (Plantinga has some issues with it, but I don’t really.)
But babies know there are other minds. They know right off, long before it could even occur to them to try that kind of argument.
Evidence is fine, and it might be there, but it’s possible to know there are other minds without evidence.
If that’s the kind of evidence you want, Plantinga has had plenty of it. I’ve had a good bit myself.
I was going to mention something about “it depends on what one considers ‘evidence’ and ‘rational.'”
But when I talk to my wife or my neighbor or my friends, I suppose I could conclude that even though these people seem very similar to me in a multitude of ways, I have a mind but they do not. It just seems like it is far more likely that since they are so very similar to me, they probably have a mind.
Maybe that’s not “evidence,” but it does seem that the people I interact with are equipped with a mind similar to mine. Even my cats appear to have minds.
Sure. If someone says that God spoke to them, I suppose that could be considered evidence that a God exists. If a Hindu says that 78 gods speak to him, I suppose that could be considered evidence that 78 gods exist.
But there is the distinct possibility that when someone says that a God or 78 gods exist, this is just the result of socialization (being raised in a religious environment where people are conditioned to believe that God/gods exist) and imagination (being able to imagine hypothetical conversations) and mental illness (hearing speech that isn’t spoken and seeing things that are not there).
There’s a lot to unpack here.
Yes, that’s evidence, and I’m ok with that argument (although Plantinga probably has some issues with it).
But it’s not what you appeared to be talking about in the quoted part.
And, more importantly, stay on topic. I never doubted for a moment that we can have evidence of other minds. That wasn’t the question. The question was:
Do we need evidence for belief in other minds to be rational?
And the answer is no.
I like your argument. But it never occurred to a baby. And babies know there are other minds.
And someone might not understand that there are other human minds, or might think there are some more minds in the room than there are. There’s a lot to sort out. It’s good to sort it out with the help of evidence if evidence is available.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t say that one person is right and one is wrong.
And maybe even more important than evidence is explaining how the one who is right knows what the other doesn’t, and knows it independently of arguments–although not independently of his experience with G-d or other minds.
Explaining how is what took Plantinga about 21 years, from about 1979 till 2000.
The answer has something to do with properly functioning faculties.
If there is no evidence for some proposition, one might be rational for believing in the truth of the proposition. Still, when there is no evidence for some proposition, one might also be rational for not believing in the truth of the proposition.
Babies react to other human beings. But you are correct in implying that babies aren’t doing philosophy.
It would seem that the proposition “There are 15 jelly beans in this jelly bean jar” is either true or false. So, if one person agrees with the proposition and another person disagrees with the proposition, we can say that one person is right and one is wrong. (Well, assuming that the number of jelly beans didn’t change after one of the people made their assertion.)
It depends on the proposition. “2 and 2 make 4” or “Other minds exist” or “I had one cup of tea today so far,” yes.
“Aliens relocated the lost city of Atlantis to the Pegasus galaxy,” no.
We need a criterion for which kinds of beliefs are properly basic.
It depends on the proposition. “2 and 2 make 4” or “Other minds exist” or “I had one cup of tea today so far,” no.
“Aliens relocated the lost city of Atlantis to the Pegasus galaxy,” yes.
We need a criterion for which kinds of beliefs are properly basic.
Yes. And your point is?
“2 and 2 make 4” seems like something that could be demonstrated by placing 2 stones in front of you, then placing 2 more stones in front of you and then counting the stones.
One might call that evidence that 2 and 2 make 4.
“Other minds exist” (if one thinks of a mind as being identical to a brain, thus “Other minds exist” is equivalent to “Other brains exist”) could be determined through induction.
So, if physicians determine that Joe has a brain inside his skull and Lucy has a brain inside his skull and Frank has a brain inside his skull, at some point physicians might decide that they are going to stop looking inside peoples’ skulls thinking that no brain will be found.
Thus, it does seem like we have evidence that “other minds/brains exist.”
ADDED: I’m not necessarily saying that we have no need for Properly Basic Beliefs or that we don’t need a good criteria for identifying Properly Basic Beliefs.
It’s just that we might find that we actually have evidence for some of our beliefs that we thought were Properly Basic.
Apparently you haven’t understood anything I’ve said.
A PBB is not a belief that has no evidence. It’s a belief that can be known independently of evidence.
I don’t remember now. You said it yourself in the video.
Unfortunately I don’t have enough interest in this to really probe it.
Oh, then it must have been the analogy between belief in other minds without evidence and belief in G-d without evidence: They’re similar in that both of them lack evidence, and also in that both of them lack any apparent reason we would need evidence. So they’re probably similar in that both of them don’t need any evidence.
Of course, this is only Plantinga’s 1967 first-draft particularism. Things get much more deep and detailed in later phases.
Yes that was it.
I finally put together a proper playlist of my miscellaneous videos dealing with Plantinga’s epistemology.
Oh, I get it. I said “The analogy is relatively weak.”
I meant by comparison to the more detailed particularism that comes up later.
My article introducing Plantinga’s epistemology was just published in Criswell Theological Review.
Congratulations! I look forward to reading it. I have access to the journal online but I don’t think I have that issue available yet. I’ll make a note to check for it again!