Plantinga Redux: Is the Scientific Realist Committed to the Rejection of Naturalism?

Graber, Abraham; Golemon, Luke

doi:10.1007/s11841-018-0695-0

Cited by 4 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…2.For example, Koons (2000), Graeber and Golemon (2020, 2022), and de Ray (2022). Plantinga's (1993; 2011) EAAN might also be included, as it is intended to show that naturalism (which Plantinga defines roughly as the negation of theism) ought to be abandoned; however, an anonymous referee has fairly pointed out that this does not necessarily qualify the EAAN as an argument for theism.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two challenges for ‘no-norms’ theism

Reilly

2022

Rel. Stud.

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A number of theistic philosophers have recently denied that God is subject to moral and rational norms. At the same time, many theists employ epistemological and inductive arguments for the existence of God. I will argue that ‘no-norms’ theists cannot make use of such arguments: if God is not subject to norms – particularly rational norms – then we can say nothing substantive about what kind of worlds God would be likely to create, and as such, we cannot predict the likelihood of any particular evidence given theism. What is more, I argue that this lack of constraint on God's creative act raises a serious sceptical challenge for no-norms theism.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two challenges for ‘no-norms’ theism

Reilly

2022

Rel. Stud.

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“…9.Cf. Graber & Golemon (2019) and de Ray (2020) for more developed discussion of evolutionary defences of IBE.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…21.There is a third advantage, which I will only briefly mention here: some have argued that metaphysical naturalists cannot justifiably hold to some version or the other of the principle of parsimony , according to which ‘simpler’ candidate theories are more likely to be true, for reasons analogous to the ones put forward here with respect to explanatory loveliness (cf. Koons, 2000; Graber & Golemon, 2019). The significance and nature of parsimony in theory choice is a matter of considerable controversy, with some denying that a theory's ‘simplicity’ (in and of itself) increases its likeliness at all (e.g.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new epistemological case for theism

Ray

2021

Rel. Stud.

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Relying on inference to the best explanation (IBE) requires one to hold the intuition that the world is ‘intelligible’, that is, such that states of affairs at least generally have explanations for their obtaining. I argue that metaphysical naturalists are rationally required to withhold this intuition, unless they cease to be naturalists. This is because all plausible naturalistic aetiologies of the intuition entail that the intuition and the state of affairs which it represents are not causally connected in an epistemically appropriate way. Given that one ought to rely on IBE, naturalists are forced to pick the latter and change their world-view. Traditional theists, in contrast, do not face this predicament. This, I argue, is strong grounds for preferring traditional theism to naturalism.

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“…But, whatever its independent merits, we have just seen that appealing to the success of the sciences would not successfully deflect my evolutionary sceptical challenge. Graber and Golemon (2019) have advanced an argument that shares many features with mine. Their argument, like mine, targets scientific realism-more exactly in their case, scientific realism conjoined with metaphysical naturalism.…”

Section: The Success Of the Sciences: Should (3) Really Bother The Rementioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 and 5, and discuss an advantage of my argument relative to the most recent evolutionary sceptical challenge to science in the literature, i.e. the one advanced by Graber and Golemon (2019), in Sect. 6.…”

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confidence: 98%

An Evolutionary Sceptical Challenge to Scientific Realism

Ray

2020

Erkenn

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Evolutionary scepticism holds that the evolutionary account of the origins of the human cognitive apparatus has sceptical implications for at least some of our beliefs. A common target of evolutionary scepticism is moral realism. Scientific realism, on the other hand, is much less frequently targeted, though the idea that evolutionary theory should make us distrustful of science is by no means absent from the literature. This line of thought has received unduly little attention. I propose to remedy this by advancing what I will call an evolutionary sceptical challenge to scientific realism. I argue that, given standard evolutionary theory, our possession of sound innate metaphysical intuitions would have taken an epistemically problematic 'lucky accident'. This, as I will show, entails that scientific realism is a selfundermining position. I discuss objections to my argument's two premises, including ones that appeal to the success of the sciences and to the possibility that sound innate metaphysical intuitions evolved as an evolutionary 'by-product'. I then draw out an advantage of my argument over a similar one recently put forward by Graber and Golemon (Sophia, 2019. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1184 1-018-0695-0). I finish by submitting that scientific realism, given the soundness of my argument, is faced with a new 'Darwinian Dilemma', and briefly address the significance of this for the debate between realists and anti-realists in the philosophy of science.

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Plantinga Redux: Is the Scientific Realist Committed to the Rejection of Naturalism?

Cited by 4 publications

References 28 publications

Two challenges for ‘no-norms’ theism

Two challenges for ‘no-norms’ theism

A new epistemological case for theism

An Evolutionary Sceptical Challenge to Scientific Realism

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