God, Other Minds, and the Inference to the Best Explanation

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip A. Ostien
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Teleological Argument ◽  
Analogical Argument

Professor Plantinga's “scandalous” conclusion thatIf my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latterrests in part on the twin claims that the best reason we have for belief in other minds is the analogical argument, and the best reason we have for belief in God is the teleological argument. The conclusion also rests on Plantinga's analyses of these two arguments, which show that both fail for very similar reasons. Thus the beliefs based on these arguments are “in the same epistemological boat,“ and Plantinga draws his conclusion. This is, as James Tomberlin says, “an ingenious argument for the conclusion that belief in God is justified in the absence of any good reason whatever.“In this paper I wish to consider the two claims mentioned above, that the best reasons we have for belief in other minds and belief in God are the analogical and teleological arguments, respectively.

God and other programs

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Louise Friquegnon
Keyword(s):  
Computer Program ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Analogical Inference ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Teleological Argument ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Analogical Argument

In God and Other Minds, Alvin Plantinga formulated an ingenious defence of the teleological argument for the belief in God, based on alleged similarities to the analogical argument for other minds. I shall state what I take to be Plantinga's central argument and then I shall criticize it on two counts: 1. Even if Plantinga's claims about the similarities between these two famous arguments were sound, they would at most provide rational support for pantheism, but not for the traditional Judaeo-Christian theism that Plantinga attempts to defend; and 2. The similarities alleged by Plantinga do not in fact hold. The analogical inference to other minds is grounded on resemblance between one's own behaviour and the behaviour of others, while the teleological argument for God is grounded on resemblance between human contrivances and the world. If the teleological argument really worked, it would count against rather than being supported by the analogical argument, for it would reduce the world to a soulless machine created and programmed by God, and, by inverse inference, would strongly suggest that God himself is exactly so much of a Mind as J. C. Smart and Hilary Putnam take human minds to be, i.e. a computer program.

God and other minds

2010 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
FIONA ELLIS
Keyword(s):  
Other Minds ◽  
Inductive Approach ◽  
Belief In God

AbstractI reconsider the idea that there is an analogy between belief in other minds and belief in God, and examine two approaches to the relevant beliefs. The ‘explanatory inductive’ approach raises difficulties in both contexts, and involves questionable assumptions. The ‘expressivist’ approach is more promising, and presupposes a more satisfactory metaphysical framework in the first context. Its application to God is similarly insightful, and offers an intellectually respectable, albeit resistible, version of the doctrine that nature is a book of lessons.

Nielsen and Penelhum an agents outside space

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Farlow-King
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Other Minds

‘For the inference involved in our knowledge of other minds is not, after all, an inference to them as bodily existences…’ (H. D. Lewis)In his recent and typically thought-provoking paper, ‘On the Rationality of Radical Theological Non-Naturalism’, Kai Nielsen attacks those who, like Terence Penelhum, believe that ‘there is no good reason to think that we could not, with a little ingenuity, think up some non-theistic statements which would serve, if true, to put some theistic conclusions beyond reason-able doubt’.

Fundamentalism and Warranted Belief: Response to Harriet A. Harris

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Shortt
Keyword(s):  
Other Minds ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Belief In God

I MAKE A few brief comments in response to what Harriet Harris says so helpfully. Taking belief in God as basic is more like taking belief in other minds as basic than doing so with beliefs in everyday objects such as trees. A belief may be held as basic and, at the same time, open to criticism. Foundations may be discovered retrospectively as we walk on them rather than established first as something from which we start to build.

Awareness of God

Philosophy ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 40 (151) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
A. C. Ewing
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Similar Position ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Awareness Of God

‘PROOFS of God’ are under a cloud today, and whether the cloud can be dissipated or not, I am not going to try to dissipate it in this article. Modern thinkers have created a mental climate very unfavourable to metaphysics, but they have certainly not succeeded in disproving on principle the possibility of valid and fruitful metaphysical arguments even in the old transcendent sense of ‘metaphysics’. However, I must admit that in my opinion the best that can be said of arguments for the existence of God is that they give some intellectual support to the belief, not that they are really decisive. If this is so, it becomes of very special importance to consider whether those may be right who maintain that we can come to knowledge of or at least justified belief in God otherwise than by inference. I am not considering the views of those who base the belief solely on authority: argument would be required to decide whether we ought to accept an authority, and if so which. What I am referring to is the claim that there are certain 'mystical' and other religious experiences which can without argument adequately and rationally assure one of God's existence. Obviously from the nature of the case a man who makes this claim for himself cannot prove to others that he is right, but can any good reason be given to support the view that he is wrong? If not, the possibility remains that those who dispute with him are in a similar position to that of a tonedeaf man disagreeing with Beethoven about the value of music.

Nielsen, Ethics and God

1978 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Osmond G. Ramberan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Moral Insight ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
The Will

One of the central claims of most religious people (especially those in the Judeo-Christian tradition) is that morality is based upon religion or, more specifically, on a belief in God. A morality which is not God-centred not only cannot provide a genuine basis for moral beliefs but is really and truly groundless. For without a belief in the sovereignty of God, there can be no genuine adequate foundation for moral beliefs. In his recent book, Ethics Without God, Kai Nielsen claims that this view is grossly mistaken. According to Nielsen, morality cannot be based on religion because moral claims cannot be derived from religious (non-moral) cosmological claims such as ‘God is Creator’, or ‘God exists’. ‘God wills X’, ‘God commands X’, do not entail ‘X ought to be done’, or ‘I ought to do X’. It is perfectly in order for someone to say that God wills (commands) X, but is X good? It is also perfectly in order for someone to say that God commands me to do X, but why should I obey God? Surely it cannot be because God is powerful and, if I do not obey his commands, he will punish me. It may be prudent and expedient to obey God because I am afraid of punishment, but this is surely not a morally good reason for obeying him. Moral obligations follow God's commands only if it is assumed that God is morally perfect or that he is good or that his commands are right (p. 5). But I cannot know that God is good without an understanding of what it is for something to be good. To be sure, ‘God is good’, is a truth of language, but in order to understand it we must have a prior understanding of goodness- an understanding which is ‘logically prior to, and independent of, any understanding or acknowledgement of God’ (p. 11). Moreover, Nielsen argues, the religious quest is a quest to find a being that is ‘worthy of worship’, but it is by our own moral insight that we decide that any being, any Z, is ‘worthy of worship’. The decision that there is a Z such that Z is worthy of worship is a moral judgment which is in no way dependent upon the will of God. But more than this, ‘God’, in ‘God is worthy of worship’, is, in most cases, used analytically so that anyone who is brought to say ‘My God’, or ‘My Lord and my God’, is using ‘God’ evaluatively and by implication making a moral judgment - a moral judgment which is logically prior to the will or command of God. This leads Nielsen to conclude:

The Argument From Design: Some Better Reasons for Agreeing with Hume

1980 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Doore
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Inductive Proof ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Teleological Argument ◽  
Argument From Design ◽  
Analogical Argument ◽  
Weak Claim ◽  
The Universe

I. The argument from design or ‘teleological argument’ purports to be an inductive proof for the existence of God, proceeding from the evidence of the order exhibited by natural phenomena to the probable conclusion of a rational agent responsible for producing that order. The argument was severely criticized by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and it was widely conceded that Hume's objections had cast serious doubt on the adequacy of the teleological argument, if not destroyed its credibility entirely. However, there has been a recent reappraisal of this claim by R. G. Swinburne, who maintains that none of Hume's criticisms have any validity against a ‘carefully articulated version of the argument’. Using an analogical argument based on temporal regularities rather than on spatial regularities (or arrangement of parts), Swinburne claims to have shown that the teleological argument is a legitimate inference to the best explanation whose force depends only on the strength of the analogy and on the degree to which the resulting theory makes explanation of empirical matters simpler and more coherent. Moreover, he claims to have shown that the argument provides support for the Christian monotheistic hypothesis and not merely for the weak claim that the universe was designed (somehow). This is an important claim since it has long been thought that Hume's most devastating blow was dealt when he showed that the teleological argument (if it is admitted to have any force at all) provides just as much support for the negation of certain propositions considered essential to Christian monotheism as it does for their affirmation.

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