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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Philip A. Ostien
Philip A. Ostien*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Extract

Professor Plantinga's “scandalous” conclusion that

If my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter

rests 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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , September 1974 , pp. 149 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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References

1 Plantinga, A. God and Other Minds (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 271.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. viii.

3 Tomberlin, J. “Is Belief in God Justified?” Journal of Philosophy (1970), p. 31.Google Scholar

4 The position I am adopting here with respect to the problem of justifying belief in other minds and belief in God is by no means new; it is discussed, relative to one or the other or both of these issues, in the following papers, among others: Wisdom, J. “Gods,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1944)Google Scholar, reprinted in Flew, A. G. N. (ed.), Logic and Language, First Series (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1951 )Google Scholar. Ziff, P. “The Simplicity of Other Minds,” Journal of Philosophy (1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Harman, G. “The Inference to the Best Explanation,” Philosophical Review (1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is from Harman that I have taken the phrase “the inference to the best explanation.” Pashman, J. “Is the Genetic Fallacy a Fallacy?” Southern journal of Philosophy (1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Rowe, W. L. “God and Other Minds,“ Nous (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Plantinga, God and Other Minds, p. 269.Google Scholar

7 This illustration is taken from J. F. Ross, “Truth,” which I have in ditto copy.

8 “The Simplicity of Other Minds,” op. cit.

9 Plantinga's comments immediately follow Ziff's paper, op. cit. References to these comments in the following are given in otherwise unspecified page numbers.

10 I realize Plantinga may not be making the second claim.

11 “God and Other Minds,” op. cit., p. 283.

12 Cf. Hempel, C. G. “The Empiricist Criterion of Meaning,” Revue lnternationale de Philosophie (1950)Google Scholar, reprinted in Ayer, A.J. (ed.), Logical Positivism (New York: The Free Press, 1959).Google Scholar

13 Cf.Galatians 5:19-23.

14 Confessions, Book I, Chapter 1.

15 Cf. Hick, J. Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), p. 36.Google Scholar

16 Slote, M.A. in his review of Plantinga's book (Journal of Philosophy [1970])Google Scholar, says that Plantinga's reply to the argument that natural evil is evidence against the existence of God strikes him as “sophistic“; Plantinga's reply is that we have no evidence against the view that fallen angels cause natural evil out of their free will and that God created angels with free will (who could fall) for the same sort of reason that he created men with free will. This answer is not sophistic but only an elaboration of the Christian explanatory framework. Slate says that “most philosophers and scientists would argue that we do have evidence against the existence of fallen angels, just as we have evidence against phlogiston and leprechauns ….” Couched in the terms of this paper, Slate's claim here is that there is a naturalistic explanation of all events explained by the Christian explanatory framework which is better than the explanation offered by the Christian explanatory framework.

17 Cf. Pashman, “Is the Genetic Fallacy a Fallacy?” op. cit.

18 Hick, Philosophy of Religion, op. cit., p. 36.Google Scholar

19 This paper has been improved because of comments made on earlier drafts of it by several of my colleagues at the University of Iowa.