A Reply to Pedr on ‘Where the Conflict Really Lies’ Amazon Review

The author defends the thesis that belief in god is rational. To make his point, he asks if we can prove (I guess in the mathematical sense) that other minds exist. He claims we can’t do it, yet we accept that other minds exist. We believe all kinds of things we can’t prove. That’s rational he claims, so what’s so irrational about believing god exists then?

Pedr

Plantinga never asserts that minds need to be proven mathematically. However, he does claim in another book (God and Other Minds) that all arguments for other minds fail. Logical and evidential.

Belief in god is on the same order as believing other minds exist. Except that it isn’t. I interact with other people all day every day and use a common language and cooperate on common tasks. The brute facticity and immense weight of the world and other minds confronts me constantly. This does not occur with belief in god. Where is the immense weight of evidence for god? If there is, why struggle with doubt, dear believer? I have never once in my life doubted whether my wife or children have minds.

Pedr

Plantinga claims that arguments for other minds fail. Even so, we are still rational in belief in other minds. So, what is the reviewer trying to say here? It would be a laughable argument to say, “I interact with other people all day every day and use a common language and cooperate on common tasks. Therefore, other minds exist.” This observation is not an argument for the existence of other minds. Perhaps Mr. Pedr is instead saying that because he’s constantly interacting with other people, this is more rational than believing in God because he’s not interacting with God daily. But many other theists and I would claim that we interact with God daily. We feel His love every day. We feel his presence. If Mr. Pedr is going to say that we are irrational for these beliefs, he would presuppose that God does not exist. Yet, Mr. Pedr probably needs a sufficient defeater for this. If Mr. Pedr had read up on more of Plantinga’s work, this embarrassing review would not have transpired.

Thirdly, Plantinga argues that if evolution is true, our cognitive faculties would be unreliable and we could not obtain reliable knowledge (our cognitive faculties have a very low probability of being reliable). Only a god who created us (i.e., guided our evolution) could guarantee the reliability of our cognitive faculties. This is his famous evolutionary argument against naturalism. We do have reliable knowledge. Therefore, naturalism is false.

Pedr

Plantinga does not claim naturalism is false. He claims that belief in naturalism and evolution is self-defeating.

I, however, I accept evolution and fully accept that our cognitive faculties are unreliable. So how is reliable knowledge possible then? It is possible by means of a method external to us. It is called scientific methodology. It is an intersubjective activity that corrects for the unreliability of our cognitive faculties in order to arrive at reliable knowledge.

Pedr

Here is Plantinga’s argument taken from the Reasonable Faith website:

1. The probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given naturalism and evolution, is low.
2. If someone believes in naturalism and evolution and sees that, therefore, the probability of his cognitive faculties’ being reliable is low, then he has a defeater for the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable.
3. If someone has a defeater for the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable, then he has a defeater for any belief produced by his cognitive faculties (including his belief in naturalism and evolution).
4. Therefore, if someone believes in naturalism and evolution and sees that, therefore, the probability of his cognitive faculties’ being reliable is low, then he has a defeater for his belief in naturalism and evolution.
   Conclusion: Naturalism and evolution cannot be rationally accepted.

It’s unclear which premise Mr. Pedr denies by announcing that science methodology “is an intersubjective activity that corrects for the unreliability of our cognitive faculties in order to arrive at reliable knowledge.” He clearly accepts premise (1) when he says, “I, however, I accept evolution and fully accept that our cognitive faculties are unreliable.” But at the same time, he almost wants to argue against premise (1) by his scientific methodological announcement. Not to say that science raises the probability of our faculties being reliable but that it “corrects the unreliability of our cognitive faculties.” Mr. Pedr does not realize that since he accepts premise (1), he has no reason to believe that the scientific method is truth-tracking. How does Mr. Pedr know that scientific methodology corrects the unreliability of our cognitive faculties without assuming that his cognitive faculties are reliable enough to realize that the scientific methodology is correct?