Alvin Plantinga is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading Christian philosophers. Watch the video below and ask yourself, WTF?
So as not to spoil your fun, I’ll refrain from offering my take on the argument until readers have had a chance to comment.
LOL! Yeah, that about sums up the mindset of ‘skeptics’ here at TSZ.
Of course, the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy that Plantinga received last year (from a non-Christian committee) suggests no legitimacy as a philosopher compared to KN & walto’s skepticism. Next do you want to throw Ernest Sosa and co-awardee Jürgen Mittelstraß under the bus too? Is ‘everything’ they’ve said wrong too? The Rescher Prize must be just a cover for Christian apologetics (read: therefore illegitimate to ‘skeptics’).
Basically, this amounts to: “walto is not a Christian, so Plantinga is ‘stooopid’,” That walto admits “I kind of think he [Plantinga] should be” highly regarded means nothing in the end due to his atheism/agnosticism.
Understood that for religious people, Plantinga’s philosophy makes more sense, resonates, connects, is more meaningful than it does for atheists/agnostics who have no Transcendent Source in their lives. (Now skeptics will line up asking/demanding for empirical, natural scientific proof of Transcendence as if it is a mirage!)
At least you believe he is talented, walto. Perhaps you could contribute something by saying how this talent is demonstrated. Obviously, people who don’t believe in free will (at least a few folks at TSZ) ‘feel’ he is ‘deeply wrong’ with his free will defense; people who embrace naturalism (most at TSZ) find faults in his EAAN. What’s surprising about this? TSZ adds nothing but doubt to the conversation.
Are you 100% sure you didn’t leave information in your TSZ profile that identifies you?
It is against the rules to ‘out’ people at TSZ. But it is not, afaik, against the rules to know who they are in real life.
As for “I’ve never presented my work at a conference outside of the US,” that is not what I said or meant. If you teach your own level of reading comprehension to your students, KN, that would be a shame. I just hope you don’t subject them to your philosopher-hero list as if that’s ‘high quality philosophy’ in our era. It’s predominantly a decrepit philosophy based on disenchantment and emptiness (the quasi-nihilism you often discuss here) that your naturalism has displayed at TSZ.
Oh, wait, but one of your top-heroes W. Sellars, who you’ve said you’re now writing a book about, wrote: “science is the measure of all things.” But you kinda, sorta, maybe reject the ideology of scientism, *if* you would ever get around to speaking clearly and directly without confused analytic jargon in public settings, like competent philosophers should.
Plantinga does not agree that “science is the measure of all things.” He rejects scientism and naturalism. He embraces transcendence and a meaningful world. For that reason, he is quite understandably ‘deeply objectionable’ to Kantian naturalist, strange empiricist, quasi-Buddhist, environmentalist, maybe Gaia/deep ecologist, esoteric, agnostic philosophists, all one of them on planet Earth. Maybe if KN can ever flip-the-script, he’d find more credibility and joviality as Plantinga obviously has found.
That’s been very helpful to me as I continue to try to puzzle my way through.
I did not understand the overlap with intensional contexts . I had the conception that substitutabilty of co-extensive terms, as I understood it from intensional contexts, was also key to understanding de re/de dicto. This was part of the reason for my wrong example which you critique.
I understand now that intensional and de re/de dicto overlap, partly I think because the de re/de dicto distinction can help explain ambiguities in intensional context, but that the distinction you make is a key to understanding de dicto versus de re, not co-extensive terms.
By the way, whenever I’ve seen the Superman example, I’ve always assumed one is supposed to take is as given that Superman is part of the actual world for the purposes of the example. It never occurred to me that the examples might also be encompassing the fact that he is fictional. I am pretty sure they were not.
Anyway, I offer these two examples of my confused thinking in case they help with future teaching.
Gregory,
FWIW, Sosa was one of my profs way back when I was in grad school.
I’ve tried to convey my idea of Plantinga in a couple of prior posts. Maybe you haven’t seen them or maybe I’ve done a bad job. I’m kind of a fan of his. Ikve learned quite bit from studying his (sometimes quite obscure) works and one of the highlights of my first trip to Europe when I was 20 was going to the Oxford Univ. Press store in Oxford and blowing just about all the money I had on 2 books. One of them was _The Nature of Necessity_, which wasn’t yet availabe in the states.
As you note, I don’t agree with him about much, but, as indicated, I’m always a little nervous about disagreeing with somebody who I acknowledge to be both smarter and a better philosopher than I am. Such a position is fraught with peril, obviously. Yet I think he’s usually wrong and I think I can see why/where generally. Could I be mistaken, though? Sure!
Two other nostalgic notes: when I was a young prof at IC a million years ago, I debated a grad student at a Cornell colloquium on something or other (non-theological). The guy was a rabid Plantinganian: that was my first experience of the utter devotion Plantinga can engender.
Second, it was back in those days that I first encountered Plantinga’s most famous/distinguished disciple–Peter van Inwagon. At that time, van Inwagon had not yet hitched his wagon to Plantinga’s star. He was an obscure nobody at some little institution. I met him at a meeting of something called The upstate NY Philosophy Club (or something like that). He later became a wicked big shot, partly, I think, by mirroring P (although he, too, is a very guy).
Anyhow, in sum, I admire P and have read a lot of his work. I think he’s wrong and admire others more, though.
I read Penrose when his bad boy book came out. He is obviously a lot smarter than I am, but he is speculating, and not many people think there’s anything useful in his speculation.
Dualism looks like vitalism to me. I see no difference between Plantinga’s modal stuff and vitalism. Is life more than chemicals? That kind of thing. Why is a living body different from a dead body?
Can anyone differentiate the two issues?
BruceS,
Bruce, your remarks seem right on target to me: de re reference is indeed closely related to scope distinctions in quantification. In fact, there’s a footnote in Kripke’s _Naming and Necessity_, basically the Bible on this stuff, that I have to re-read every couple of years to remind myself why rigid designation isn’t exactly what you get when you change the scope. (It’s a helpful footnote: just search for “scope” in his work and you’ll find it.) I could be wrong about this, but I’m not even sure whether in the earliest commentary on that issue, by Keith Donnellan, there really IS any difference between rigid, causal designation and what you get when you change the scope of the quantifier in any old-fashioned definite description.
…very SMART guy.
petrushka,
If it helps, I think all vitalists are dualists (although Searle denies he’s a property dualist for reasons I never quite understood), but not all dualists are vitalists.
Have you seen the KN comment I quoted? have you seen the comments on that post?
No keiths, in this case of arguments you have to be precise
“It’s possible that I could exist when my body doesn’t”
Is not what Plantinga said. Plantinga said
“I can conceive(immagine) me living in another body.”
Me living in another body it is not necessary possible what is true is that I can immagine that.
To compare the same statement in your case
Not knowing “the actual president of US” I can immagine he is white.
Not knowing Barack Obama I can immagine he is white
That does not help distinguish Plantinga’s argument from vitalism as a species of thought. It’s a variety of incredulity.
I see no physical difference between a dead body and a live body. therefore there must be some vital principle in addition to the physical configuration. The body -mind problem is wrapped up in pretty words, but it’s a shell game, and — I think — a kind of equivocation. Just a very sophisticated kind of equivocation.
I’m not sure if this is how you meant it, but I think considering vitalism is another way of thinking about Walt’s original criticism of the argument:
Early in the 20th century, it seemed true that life was something different from a biochemical process in a body.
Similarly, what seems true about the mind being something different from processes in some body may also turn out to be not true.
Now in the case of the mind, it is not so easy to reject the intuition: how could first person perspective, sensations, etc, just be some property of physical bodies. They seem to be nowhere in the biochemisrty.
A lot of smart people remain convinced by arguments like P’s that something like property dualism is true or there is other fundamental limitation in current science’s understanding of the physical world which we will need to overcome to explain mind.
Robin,
Plantinga holds all of the following:
1. If I am my body, then I am my body in every possible world. (self-identity is a necessary property of every entity)
2. For all X If I can conceive of X not having some property, then there’s a possible world in which X doesn’t have that property. (premise–and in my view, a questionable one)
3. I can conceive of me not being my body. (also questionable premise)
4. I am such that there’s a possible world in which I am not this body. (from 2 & 3)
5. This body is not such that there’s a possible world in which it is not this body. (self-identity is a necessary property of every entity)
6. For all X and Y, if X = Y then X has all and only the properties that Y has in every possible world it/they exist(s) (Leibniz’s Law)
7. Therefore, I am not my body (from 4, 5 & 6)
That’s a more complete spelling out of Plantinga’s argument. As I’ve said, it’s not too different from Descartes’ simpler version:
1. I can doubt that my body exists. (maybe there’s an evil demon, or I’m a brain in a vat, etc.)
2. I can’t doubt that I exist. (premise)
3. Leibniz’s Law
4. Therefore, I am not my body.
These arguments may be faulty, but IMO, they’re not stooopid.
Water is nowhere in the description of hydrogen or of oxygen. The argument from not seeing the whole in the parts is not a particularly convincing one. It’s the kind of stock argument seen at UD.
I’m kind of surprised that the kind of argument we think is stupid when used to attack evolution is somehow sophisticated when applied to the mind-body problem.
Intuition has never been a good argument. It’s sometimes useful in forming testable conjectures, but it is never evidence.
Premise 1 is faulty.
You can doubt that your body has the properties you intuit to bodies, but regardless of what bodies are, your body exists. Being wrong about the properties of bodies is not the same as them not existing.
If you are a brain in a vat, or digits in a hologram, this does not affect the existence of your body. It merely means you are wrong about its properties.
Why do you think is questionable? Can´t you immagine be in other body? Millions of budhist immagine them comming from other bodies and going to others. Millions of womans immagine have the body of Sophia Loren. Millions of mans immagine his wife has the body of Miss universe.
We do have words for people who are unable to distinmguish between fantasy and reality.
blas and petrushka, I think it’s interesting that one of you finds it perfectly obvious that one can conceive of not being one’s body, and the other finds it pretty clear that one CAN’T doubt that one’s body exists. I’m uncertain about both of those myself, so I’m hoping you two will continue to discuss these with each other, so maybe, even if you can’t convince the other guy, you’ll convince ME!
Thanks.
walto,
Because when I watch the video, I see and hear him making exactly that mistake.
That’s all fine, but it doesn’t immunize him from error. Plantinga is a human (de re 🙂 ), and humans are fallible.
I hope you’ll share that construal with us.
ETA: I see you’ve done that in a later comment, above. I’ll respond to that separately.
I look forward to having my rookie mistakes corrected by you. (Bruce, got your popcorn ready? 🙂 )
I think it’s noteworthy when a prominent philosopher publicly offers such a bad argument, and I think you were right to observe that Plantinga has largely wasted his talent on Christian apologetics.
You’ll notice that I haven’t called Plantinga stupid (or ‘stooopid’). However, his argument is lame, as even you acknowledge:
Gregory,
What do you think of Plantinga’s argument?
I think it’s perfectly possible to conceive of things that don’t exist. We have a category of writing devoted to the results. But if — by conceive — you mean form a testable model having entailments — I think you are simply wrong.
Any conception of a person that is in the form of a testable model will include a body
Exactly what that means is not completely known. But the non-corporeal mind has exactly the same usefulness as invisible pink unicorns.
Yes, I agree with your assessment here Walto. In fact, given this coupled with Petrushka’s example of the river/flame, I now see a real problem with the concept of my first-person perspective reoccurring in other times/places, but not necessarily reoccurring in the form I am currently. I think, as Petrushka shows, that belies an inaccurate concept to “me/body”. In other words, my first-person perspective is part of what this body does. As such, without this body, there can be no “me” looking out on any world.
I am somewhat disappointed that no one seems interested in that rather vast literature of what happens to our first person perspective when parts of the brain are damaged.
My personal favorite example is that of the artist who lost his color vision as a result of a “stroke.” (Don’t recall the technical medical condition.)
He did not simply lose the ability to see color; he also lost the ability to conceive of color. I consider this to be a rather convincing demonstration that the ability to conceive is a function of and activity of the brain. How can you reconcile dualism with the requirement that certain specific brain parts are required even to imagine color? Or that the ability to imagine color can be lost to someone who once made a living working with color?
walto,
I think it would help the discussion considerably if you could answer the question I posed earlier:
(Or, if you think my summary of Plantinga’s argument is unfair, could you say why, specifically, and identify the offending sentence(s)?)
For your convenience, here is the comment containing those summaries:
petrushka,
Interactive dualists like Descartes hold that mental events are caused by physical events, so nothing about the brain injury stuff would daunt them.
walto,
That’s a very nice summary of Plantinga’s argument.
I too find (2) and (3) to be the most questionable premises. My main objection to (2) is that I worry that the “Conceivability Implies Possibility” (CIP) inference rule too restrictive. If that were the case, then we could not conceive of impossibilities.
Take the Godel incompleteness theorem. It shows that, for any formal system rich enough to capture the elementary truths of arithmetic, it will necessarily be the case that there are true statements about that system which cannot be proven by that system. Put otherwise, it is impossible for any formal system rich enough to capture the elementary truths of arithmetic to be complete. But surely we have to conceive of that impossibility to prove that it is impossible, no? So CIP cannot be right, if my reasoning here is sound.
My preference is for what Bob Hanna calls “modal dualism”: that there is analytic necessity and possibility, and then there’s non-analytic necessity and possibility. (Making sense of this requires accepting the analytic/synthetic distinction, but I’m happy with that — I find Quine’s criticisms of the distinction wholly unconvincing.) So even if CIP is a valid inference rule, it would show that conceivability entails analytic possibility, not that it entails non-analytic possibility.
(3) seems problematic — I can conceive of my not having this particular body, but can I conceive of myself not having any body at all? Can I conceive of myself as having my memory and intellect while being unable to perceive and move? Would that wholly disembodied mind be me? I don’t see how.
I think the concept of causation is defective and leads to unhelpful models.
If what I conceive is possible or not is irrelevant for Leibniz`s principal. It requires the same true statement for both beens to be identical.
That’s the best I can do, I’m afraid. As indicated, if you want to keep implying that you understand these matters better than Plantinga, be my guest.
petrushka,
OK, but causes or no causes, dualists have conceded mind/brain connections at least since the 17th Century. They may be wrong, but they’re not living on Oz.
Blas,
And accurate, too. Keep that in mind as you read the following.
Blas:
Yes, it is. Plantinga’s words:
And:
Actually, what Sellars said was, “in the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all things, of what it is that it is and of what is not that it is not.” That relative clause is all-important for appreciating what Sellars is and is not saying. He is not saying, for one thing, that the dimension of describing and explaining the world is the only dimension of human discourse and experience.
Sellars is extremely clear that our discourse is “polydimensional” — it includes not only descriptive/explanatory discourse, but also ethical discourse, mathematical discourse, and semantical discourse (the discourse of “…. means ____” statements). In fact, he takes aim at Quine precisely for Quine’s rejection of the polydimensionality of discourse in favor of the single dimension of science.
walto:
You’re being hopelessly literal. Native English speakers understand that “we can say X” is not equivalent to “our mouths can form the words” or “our hands can type the letters”.
“We can say X” obviously means “we can legitimately say X” in the context of my summary, and I can easily delete a few words to nullify your pedantic objection:
Nothing relevant has changed; the flaw is still there.
keiths:
walto:
It uses the same bad logic as Plantinga’s argument. The wording is straightforward. Surely you can come up with a response, right?
My challenge remains:
Thanks for re-emphasizing what I think is an interesting point.
There are many people who agree that it is conceivable that their personality could exist on a completely different physical substrate. In fact, Ray Kurzwell has bet money on it .
To me, the only way to conceive of a mind without a body is to accept dualism.
Then the rest of the argument seems to go:
– if you accept dualism, then it is possible that the mind exists without any body
– the body cannot exist without the body,
– hence the mind is different from any body,
– hence dualism.
Which seems a long about way of saying that if you accept dualism, then dualism is possible according to what you accept.
I’m sure I must be missing something
Emergent phenomena from science — life, water, heat from molecular motion, you name it – they all only work those things are part of the world we all share and can agree on with the objective methods of science. They are all out there for us all to see, analyse, and agree on.
But the whole point of treating mind as something special, in particular its first person perspective and experiences, is that these things cannot be addressed the way those objectively-observable emergent phenomena can.
I’m trying to defend a position I don’t really believe, so I’m probably not doing a good job. But that’s my understanding of the counter-argument.
Argument from antiquity is not an argument. There are ideas that have been around much longer and which are still wrong. My response would be that anything that can interact with matter is matter. It’s not just semantics. If something — let’s call it dark matter or dark energy — interacts with matter, the interaction is a material interaction and will have entailments that can be studied.
But my objection to dualism is much simpler and has not been responded to (even in principle) and I think it is devastating. What does it mean to be able to conceive of something if removal of specific brain tissue also removes our ability to conceive of it? I think the colorblind artist is an experimental test of Plantinga’s modal conjecture, and I think his conjecture fails utterly.
The ability to conceive of something absolutely requires the physical substrate that does the conceiving. Damage the body and the conception goes away. That makes no sense if the mind is not what the brain does.
Kantian Naturalist,
It’s important to note, though, that Sellars is also quite clear that he believes the “scientific image” will one day completely replace the–in his view much inferior–“manifest image.”
I’m going to go on record with a conjecture that might surprise some.
I think Kurzweil is wrong. I do not believe the brain is a computer that processes information, and I don’t think consciousness will ever be transferred to another medium or substrate. I think consciousness is an emergent property of physics and chemistry, and I don’t think there is any practical way to emulate the chemistry in real time.
That could change, but it will require something beyond transistors. I do believe we will continue making and improving artificial intelligence, but the Hollywood fantasy will remain a fantasy. I will note that Hollywood seems to be acknowledging the power and energy problem, probably because IBM has been discussing the energy needs of some of its primitive efforts.
What no one talks about is the small problem of programming. The structure of our brains has evolved, and structure is programming. No one has proposed a shortcut to evolution.
petrushka,
I haven’t argued from antiquity and I don’t think that the dualists are right, so I’m not really following you here.
The physical necessity of brains to those having mental states is generally not disputed by modern dualists, so I don’t think reminding them of the fact will do much good.
BruceS,
I don’t think that it’s it. Even someone who can fully conceive of him or herself as being distinct from his or her body would not, on that basis alone, conclude that dualism is correct. All that one can conclude is that dualism is not necessarily false. (In my terms, not analytically necessarily false.)
In fact, I think that’s correct — dualism is not analytically necessarily false! So in that regard I’m actually much more sympathetic to the letter (though not the spirit) of the Kripke/Plantinga argument than anyone here. And if materialism were analytically necessarily true, then dualism would be analytically necessarily false. So I don’t think that materialism is analytically necessarily true. If materialism is true at all, it would have to be either non-analytically necessarily true or contingently true in the actual, non-necessary world.
What frustrates me about Kripke and the whole tradition of a priori metaphysics that he inspired — David Lewis, David Armstrong, Peter van Inwagen, Alvin Plantinga — is that extraordinary intellect (genius, really) goes into following what I think of as a deeply suspect methodology. Plantinga is certainly correct to say that dualism is not analytically necessarily false, and his modal argument shows exactly that. But it does not show that dualism is true about us. His argument doesn’t even show that it is a reasonable belief about us. (Unless the bar for “reasonable” is set appallingly low.)
In order to show that dualism is true about us, or even likely to be true about us, or even a promising candidate for the truth about us, one would have to look at the evidence — one has to come down from the majestic heights of Mount A Priori, stop consulting one’s “intuitions,” and see if the evidence confirms or challenges those intuitions.
In other words, a priori metaphysics won’t get you very far — it certainly won’t get to you understand what the actual world is like, and that’s where the comedy and tragedy of human existence unfolds.
keiths,
I’m sorry, but the whole thing is confused, keith. The Alvin result would be perfectly acceptable to Plantinga and his kin. He doesn’t think Alvin is identical to Alvin’s body any more than he (Plantinga) is identical to Plantiga’s body. If you put the argument carefully/correctly he will accept it and it will be valid (though unsound).
I know you like to fight but I really don’t know what else to tell you to keep this going.
That’s the point of my colorblind painter example. If you are not what your body does, show me an example of you without your body.
Have a chat with the colorblind painter about the themes of his previous paintings. See if his extra-corporeal mind can wrap itself around the concept of color. If mind is not what the body does, then there should be no problem.
I must say that modern dualist concepts are very odd to me. Once one gets to the point of understanding even a little about the brain, I don’t see how one can then even idly consider that “thought” is something other than physical altogether. It’s like believing that pictures on a TV are something other than electrons and it strikes me as the same sort of poor logic that led to the idea of the aether.
ETA: No dueling philosophers…
Kantian Naturalist,
I guess I don’t see this stuff in the same light as you do, KN. My own take is that these are categorial decisions, and aren’t susceptible either to apriori demonstrations OR science. I mean whatever choice we make has to be CONSISTENT with the findings of modern science (because philosophical claims carry no weight there at all), but I don’t think that actually constrains the basic categories as much as people tend to think. For example, IMO, whether there are souls or chairs or virtue in the world aren’t the sorts of thing that can be PROVEN at all–either by metaphysical inquiry OR empirical investigation.
That’s how I look at this stuff, anyhow. I think your take is a bit more Quinian about the relationship of philosophy to science and mine may be a bit more Wittgensteinian about that.
That’s very helpful, thanks. And after thinking about it a bit more, I realized that I should have said “if you accept dualism as conceivable, you mustaccept dualism as possible” as the reading of the argument as I saw it.
I’ll need to work my way through the rest of your post; off the top of my head, it seems reminiscent of the concepts of a priori versus a posteriori physicalism that I also struggle with understanding from time to time.
That’s true. There are some substantial parts of Sellars’s philosophy that I reject, and the idea that the scientific image will eventually replace the manifest image is one of them. It’s not even clear to me that the Replacement Thesis is consistent with other things that Sellars says about the polydimensionality of discourse and the irreducibility of normative discourse to non-normative discourse. I don’t even think that the Replacement Thesis follows from the maximally charitable reading of convergent scientific realism that Jay Rosenberg develops from Sellars’s version.
There’s no reason to think that, just because scientific theorizing progressively discloses the ultimate structures of reality, that our ordinary ways of experiencing and categorizing the world in lived experience are in any way “second-rate”, let alone replaceable by science in the grand fullness of time.
My position is that it is too soon to tell.
Not to make you too angry (grin), but taking the position that science could never accomplish this seems reminiscent of a “God of the gaps” argument.
I would very much like to think that my Sellarsian take is a via media between Quine and Wittgenstein! 🙂
I actually have a tremendous admiration and respect for Wittgenstein, more the late than the early, but there’s no doubt that he’s The Giant of 20th-century philosophy. Whereas Quine I find vastly over-rated, though certainly worth reading and taking seriously.
Let me state the point I made above a bit differently: I’m all on board with Sellars, and others before and since, in wanting to figure out the revisionary metaphysics of science. And I’m all on board with Sellars, and other before and since, in wanting to figure out the descriptive metaphysics of experience. What I don’t share is Sellars’s underlying faith in Oneness — that somehow these two different metaphysics have to be fused, or reconciled, or whatever.
I missed this point by William earlier. The only real problem I have with it would be if any of that re-manifesting involved a mind existing without some kind of physical substrate. I’d also leave out dying: after all, if you continue to exist as a person somehow, dying does not enter into it.
William also posted separately:
I remember reading some material by Derek Parfit on how one could try to adapt the concept of personal identity to situations which allowed people to be split into separate bodies and possibly merged again later.
Of course, I am sure he and his readers looked at this as an interesting philosophical exercise to tell us about personal identity in reality, not as something that was going to arise in the real world.
So it’s ironic that the best current science is consistent with not just a single person splitting, but (in effect) whole universes splitting at creation.
(Or “Hubble Bubbles” not “universes”, if you prefer. And not really splitting, just being exact duplicates from the get go. But you get my drift.)
It’s just a conjecture. Give me a computer that can fold a protein as quickly and efficiently as chemistry, and I’ll concede the point.
There are no doubt, alternate paths to artificial intelligence other than trying to emulate neurons all the way down to the atomic level, but they elude us. Until proven wrong, I’m sticking to the assertion that intelligence and consciousness have evolved and cannot be otherwise designed.
It’s equivalent to reverse engineering life. A very hard problem.