In his 1982 APA presidential address, "How to be an Anti-Realist", Alvin Plantinga (Notre Dame) argued that anti-realism is true, and that the best account of anti-realism entails the truth of theism. Plantinga summarizes his argument at the end of his address as follows:
"By way of conclusion then: the fundamental anti-realist intuition-
that truth is not independent of mind--is indeed correct. This intuition
is best accommodated by the theistic claim that necessarily, proposi-
tions have two properties essentially: being conceived by God and being
true if and only if believed by God. So how can we sensibly be anti-
realists? Easily enough: by being theists."
Recently, Michael Rea (Notre Dame) has offered a similar version of Plantinga's argument (‘‘Theism and Epistemic Truth-Equivalences’’, Nous 34:2 (2000), pp. 291–301).
Joe Salerno (Saint Louis University) and Berit Brogaard (U of MIssouri, St. Louis) published a paper ("Anti-realism, Theism and the Conditional Fallacy", Nous 39:1 (2005), pp. 123-139) that critiques Plantinga's and Rea's versions of the argument. The paper can be found here.
Quick Links
- Book
- 200 (or so) Arguments for Atheism
- Index: Assessing Theism
- Why Mainstream Scholars Think Jesus Was A Failed Apocalyptic Prophet
- What's Wrong With Plantinga's Proper Functionalism?
- Draper's Critique of Behe's Design Argument
- The Failure of Plantinga's Free Will Defense
- 100 Arguments for God Answered
- Thomistic Arguments for God Answered
- On a Common Apologetic Strategy
- On Caring About and Pursuing Truth
- A Priori Naturalism, A Priori Inerrantism, and the Bible
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A Quick Objection to the Modal Ontological Argument
(From an old Facebook post of mine back in 2018) Assume Platonism about properties, propositions, and possible worlds. Such is the natural b...
4 comments:
Similar to Plantinga and Rea's argument is Josh Peterson's, “Conceptualism and Truth” Ratio 13:3 (2000), pp. 234-238.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119037837/PDFSTART
Thanks for the reference to this critique.
Hi Chad,
Thanks for the reference to Peterson's paper!
-EA
This blog is a goldmine.
Thanks for the kind words, Luke!
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