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.
Mike,
None of that “context” contradicts my statement to Bruce:
Based on my experience talking with professional philosophers my age and younger (i.e. under forty), and seeing what kinds of positions are advertised year to year, I would say that philosophy of mind, as traditionally conceived, is on the decline. It’s being replaced by philosophy of neuroscience and philosophy of cognitive science. I regard this as a generally salutary development, though I wouldn’t want traditional (‘humanistic’) philosophy of mind to disappear altogether.
Thanks to the past two generations of philosophers trained by Dennet, Churchland, Andy Clark, David Rosenthal, Ruth Millikan, and like-minded folks, the cutting-edge philosophers of cognitive science I know all understand that you can’t do this stuff without being well-informed about cutting-edge science.
And this attitude is well-represented in philosophy departments like UCSD, Georgetown, CUNY, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Pittsburgh (H&PS) and University of Western Ontario. These aren’t voices crying in the wilderness; this is mainstream, cutting-edge philosophy.
An interesting thought experiment would be to ask whether Descartes would have come up with the same philosophy if immersed in current resesrch.
Walto, do you usually choose to hand out cupcakes with poison frosting?
Or are we being honored with the rare treat?
1 data point: Prinz’s The Conscious Brain (2012) has about 40 pages of references; if the first two pages of the list are a good sample, then about half of the references are to journals with “psychology” or “neuroscience” in their titles.
But I also have other philosophy of mind books with little or no reference to that type of scientific literature. My (possibly charitable) reading of that fact would be that those philosophers are aware of the general direction of such research, but don’t think it yet bears on the philosophy issues they are dealing with.
hotshoe,
Not sure. But maybe usual?
😉
hotshoe,
Nice metaphor, and very apt. 🙂
No doubt there are more ‘humanistically’ inclined philosophers of mind who don’t think that cognitive science bears on the questions they are dealing with. John McDowell and John Haugeland exemplify this style of philosophizing about the nature of the mind. Personally, I’m much more acquainted with that kind of philosophy than I am with philosophy of neuroscience/cognitive science. McDowell has said explicitly that he has nothing against cognitive science, but he doesn’t think that it’s relevant to epistemology and philosophy of mind.
On the one hand, I want to say that that can’t be completely right — surely understanding how the brain processes information must be relevant to mental content and justification! On the other hand, I also want to say that the personal-level concepts at work in our self-understanding have a “relative autonomy” from the subpersonal-level concepts used in neuroscientific explanation.
I don’t really have a good way of reconciling these competing orientation, so I’ll simply register that I feel the pull in both directions — a pull that I’ve felt ever since I read Putnam’s “Why reason can’t be naturalized” (1982).
I think the thread in general is over the line now, if any mods are watching.
petrushka,
Thanks for the headsup.
A couple of comments moved to guano.
Rules
For those who are curious, the guano’ed comments can be found here.
The Plantinga debate flared up on another thread, starting here and ending with this comment from walto.
I’ll respond below.
Responding here to this comment of walto’s on the other thread.
walto,
Then will you finally take responsibility for your claim and explain why my diagnosis is wrong? It’s not complicated. Just quote the part(s) you disagree with and tell us, briefly, exactly what you think the problem is. That’s how back-and-forth discussions work.
If I’ve truly made a de re/de dicto error, I’d like to know what it is. It’s very odd that you refuse to say, while nevertheless expending so much energy defending Plantinga’s honor (see below).
It isn’t, actually. I know that Plantinga is human and fallible, like everyone else, so it isn’t shocking to me that he made a mistake in his area of expertise and that I was able to identify it. I won’t be crowing about it on my resume.
You, on the other hand, seem to find it impossible to believe that your hero might be gainsaid by a mere amateur. Look at these examples of your increasing indignation:
What’s that all about, walto? You seem infuriated at the idea that I might have caught Plantinga in an error on his home turf of de re and de dicto.
Why are you so outraged? Even experts make mistakes, you know.
And since you claim that my diagnosis is wrong, why do you refuse to address it?
While I await walto’s reply to my comment above, here is another Plantinga-Kuhn video, this one addressing the problem of how an immaterial God interacts with the physical universe.
Hah. Plantinga’s my hero. Funny.
So much baiting, so little point.
I’m probably a bit late to comment on this one, but it seems to me to work like this. We are asking the question “are A and B the same things.” According to Alvin Plantinga, if we can conceive of a world in which a property of either A or B is not shared by the other, then they cannot be the same entities, as they should be the same in all possible worlds. So, lets try it.
“A” is a God creator and supreme ruler of the world.
“B” a historical Jesus of Nazareth.
As we can conceive of a world in which Jesus is an ordinary mortal who falsely claims to be “A”, and “A” cannot falsely claim to be “A” (however omnipotent He is), we should conclude that “B” and “A” are not the same entities.
So, why hasn’t Alvin Plantinga come to that conclusion?
Only essential properties must be had in every possible world.
zeus,
Yes, it’s basically the same bad logic:
1. I can conceive of Jesus not being God.
2. I can’t conceive of God not being God.
3. Jesus therefore has a property that God does not share: “Can be conceived of as non-divine”.
4. Therefore, Jesus and God are not identical.
What might get Plantinga off the hook would be some kind of Trinitarian argument that God and Jesus are not identical to begin with, despite the fact that Jesus is supposedly divine. It would be a case of one incoherent doctrine rescuing another. 🙂
Do you mean not just anything we can conceive of, like Alvin leaving his body and entering that of a beetle, or the historical Jesus being entirely human?
It seems the same to me too, but I may be missing something. By the way, Barak Obama is not necessarily black, to Plantinga’s way of thinking. We can conceive of him being reincarnated as a white woman, so black and male are properties of his body, not of the essential Barak him/her/itself.
zeus,
As a divine entity yourself, shouldn’t you be more confident of your opinions? 🙂
I do think it’s the same logic, because you can formalize it in the same way:
A has property P.
B does not have property P.
Therefore, by Leibniz’s Law, A and B are not identical.
In the ‘Alvin vs. Alvin’s body’ argument:
A = Alvin
B = Alvin’s body
P = Can be conceived of as existing when B no longer exists
In the ‘Jesus vs. God’ argument:
A = Jesus
B = God
P = Can be conceived of as non-divine
True, but that doesn’t affect the argument.
First, it’s not about what’s true in other possible worlds — it’s about what’s possibly true in our world. That’s why I rephrased your Jesus/God argument so that it didn’t mention possible worlds, and why the property P in my formalizations above does not mention possible worlds either.
Second, Leibniz’s Law requires that every property, whether essential or not, be shared between two identical entities. So it wouldn’t matter if Barack Obama weren’t black in all possible worlds; it’s enough that he’s definitely black (at least according to the absurd “one-drop rule“) in our world.
He could be white by the one drop rule. As would be Bob Marley.
If you remember the accounts, I’m not the infallible type, really, but lock up your daughters, because I’m not the immaculate conception type either.
I wasn’t really commenting on the argument. It was just something that occurred to me in passing. Another thing was that, if we’re having supernatural possibilities, then it’s possible that the Antichrist kidnapped Barak Obama before the first time he was elected, and took his place, disguising himself so well that even the first lady couldn’t tell the difference (if someone can wake up as a beetle, anything really goes). So, as we can conceive of the possibility that the current president is actually the Antichrist, then Leibniz’s law tells us that Barak Obama and the current president are not the same things.
So, either my Divine self is missing something, or Alvin Plantinga is living in a very strange world.
Why don’t we suggest a law to balance things out. In order for two entities to be different, they must be different in all possible worlds.
With this law, because we can conceive of a world in which Alvin and his body are the same, we conclude that they are the same. So our conclusions in this type of metaphysics seem to depend on which arbitrary law we select. So, we’re always begging the question.
You’re the first I know of to point this out. I wonder why no one else uses the “one drop rule” for white to compare with the stupidity of using the rule for black.
Sounds to me like a fun way to piss off racists in the US.
zeus,
In the case of human beings, essential properties have been claimed (by essentialists) to be things like being a thinking thing and coming from this particular sperm and that particular egg. In the case of a putative deity, I’m guessing they’d say he has to be worthy of worship, really good, really smart, really powerful, etc. But I think that non-predestination type essentialists (say, Kripke) would hold that Jesus could have been named “Bill” and refused to wear anything but beige. The mistake that can be made here (and that keith continues to make above) is to pump properties that derive from the name (dictum) into the res (thing). Entities are not believed by essentialists to get essential properties from the way anybody happens to conceive of them.
W
walto,
Well, that’s ironic. That’s exactly the mistake Plantinga is making, and you’re trying to attribute it to me!
As I explained earlier:
And:
walto,
Do you understand why I say that Plantinga is making that exact error?
No I don’t. This:
“The statement “it’s possible that Alvin could continue to exist when Alvin’s body has been destroyed” can be interpreted de dicto, in which case it translates to “it is possible that there is an entity that fills the role of Alvin and can exist when Alvin’s body doesn’t.” That is true.”
makes no sense at all to me. Sorry.
Really? You rejected my argument earlier, so you must have understood it then. What happened to make you de-understand it?
I’m guessing it’s makes sense to reject nonsense, although I think it’s nicer to just say I don’t understand what you’re saying there. I guess I’ve gotten nicer.
But the hell with it. Since you insist, it’s gibberish.
Don’t feel too bad, Walt. A lot of people (even philosophy PhDs!) are confused by talk of de re and de dicto. They think it sounds like gibberish.
I was trying to think of a simplified example for you, but since you have so much trouble understanding my prose, it’s probably best to use someone else’s example.
Here’s one from the Wikipedia article on de re and de dicto:
Remember that Jana’s desire is de dicto if she doesn’t care about the particular man she marries, as long as he happens to fill the role of “tallest man in Fulsom County”. Keeping that in mind, reread the statement of mine that confused you:
We are talking about the entity that fills the role of Alvin, whether that happens to be Alvin’s soul, Alvin’s body, or something else entirely — just as Jana desires to marry the man that fills the role of “tallest man in Fulsom County”, whether that’s Hector, Wilfred, or the nine foot tall immigrant. Her desire is de dicto, and so is our reference to Alvin.
I hope that helps.
Thanks for the wiki, but the problem isn’t with the concepts of de dicto and de re, the problem is with your paragraph, which makes no sense. It probably can be fixed, but not by using stuff like “the entity filling the role of Alvin” since essentialist types generally take proper names to be rigid designators.
So, you could put the whole wikipedia here and it wouldn’t help a smidge.
Are you suggesting that Alvin doesn’t have the essential property of being able to be in the body of a beetle merely because someone can conceive of him being in the body of a beetle?
If so, Plantinga clearly disagrees.
Yes, he says he could wake up as (inside?) a beetle. I guess the question is what “Alvin” names. I was taking it to name (rigidly) a human being. He uses “I” which he isn’t really using in his argument to name a human being (rigidly or otherwise), though I suppose he might say that it accidentally refers (in the actual world) to some particular body in which it’s housed. As indicated, essentialists commonly hold human beings to have necessarily grown from the particular sperm and egg they did come from.
Plantinga apparently doesn’t think he’s essentially a human being, but that he IS essentially sentient. I think that Cartesian view is kind of wacky, myself, whether one is an essentialist or not. As I indicated in my first post on this thread, I think this doubting argument for dualism (a variant of which was also pushed by Chisholm when I was in grad school) is no good.
I think keith’s “entity playing the role of Alvin” is, kind of incoherently, trying to get at this “housing” issue but it’s hard to tell.
walto,
Nothing I wrote conflicts with the idea that ‘Alvin’ is a rigid designator, referring to some fixed entity. It’s just that we don’t know what that fixed entity is. In other words, we haven’t identified “the entity filling the role of Alvin”. Is it Alvin’s body? Alvin’s soul? Something else? Each of those is an epistemic possibility, and Plantinga’s argument is supposed to eliminate “Alvin’s body” from the space of possible answers.
With that in mind, try reading my statement again:
Makes perfect sense to me.
“It is possible that there is an entity that fills the role of Alvin and can exist when Alvin’s body doesn’t” contains two occurrences of “Alvin.” Suppose “Alvin” rigidly designates a particular human being (i.e., what you’re calling “Alvin’s body” above). Then it will not be possible for there to be an entity “filling the role of Alvin” that is not identical to Alvin’s body. Anyhow, when Plantinga insists that it’s possible that he could continue after his body dies, he’s making (or trying to make) de re references to himself and his body. The question is, is that actually possible? I have my doubts.
ETA: But why do I doubt this? As I’ve indicated earlier, this whole de re reference issue seems to me to involve questions about conceptual development and language acquisition. It’s a complicated mess with a ton of literature on it–most of which has not been read by me. But I’m skeptical.
walto,
Sure, if you assume the truth of physicalism. Needless to say, Plantinga does not begin with that assumption, since the whole point of his argument is to disprove it!
Yes, he’s trying to make de re references to Alvin and Alvin’s body, because Leibniz’s Law isn’t applicable otherwise. The problem is that he inadvertently makes a de dicto reference to Alvin but plunges ahead and applies Leibniz’s Law anyway, leading to an unsound conclusion.
He’s making precisely the mistake of which you wrote:
For about the fifth time, he would not agree with you that he’s inadvertently making a de dicto reference to Alvin (whatever that means, exactly–de dicto references are to propositions or statements). If you’re saying that maybe he can’t make these de re references he thinks he can make, I probably agree with you: in fact, IIRC, it’s basically what I put in my first post on this thread. I just point out that if that’s really what you’ve been trying to say throughout this thread you’ve been doing it in a very weird manner.
walto,
Obviously, because if he had recognized that he was making a de dicto reference to Alvin, he wouldn’t have applied Leibniz’s Law. Remember, he warned against that exact mistake in his 1969 paper.
Come on, Walt. That’s what de dicto means literally, but the philosophical meaning is broader than that. Otherwise it would be impossible to make de re and de dicto references to the same thing, such as “the president”. That’s obviously not true:
de re — The president is married to a woman named Michelle.
de dicto — The president is the commander-in-chief.
It’s the same with Jana’s reference to “the tallest man in Fulsom County.” It’s not a statement or a proposition, but it is a reference, and it can be either de re or de dicto.
No, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s possible to make de re and de dicto references to Alvin, just as it’s possible to make de re and de dicto references to the president.
No, what I’ve “been trying to say throughout this thread” is what I actually have been saying: Plantinga makes a de dicto reference to Alvin. He thinks it’s de re, however, so he mistakenly applies Leibniz’s Law and reaches the unsound conclusion that Alvin is not identical to Alvin’s body.
“de re — The president is married to a woman named Michelle.
de dicto — The president is the commander-in-chief.”
What??
walto,
If you object to those examples, then you haven’t grasped de re and de dicto at all.
You can make de re and de dicto references to “the president”, just as Jana can make de re and de dicto references to “the tallest man in Fulsom County”.
I have to run, but if you’re still not getting this when I return, I’ll try expressing it using logic notation.
Yes, you can indeed make de re and de dicto references to “the president”. But what the hell does this mean:
“de re — The president is married to a woman named Michelle.
de dicto — The president is the commander-in-chief.”
Is it supposed to be illustrative of something?
In other words, I object to the examples because they’re terrible. No other reason at all.
keiths:
walto:
Yes. It illustrates that you can make de re and de dicto references to the same thing, including “the president” and “Alvin”. A de dicto reference doesn’t have to be to a “proposition or statement”, contrary to your claim.
Do you understand why ‘Alvin’ is a de dicto reference in Plantinga’s argument, while ‘Alvin’s body’ is de re? Until you understand that, you’ll remain hopelessly lost in this discussion.
Here’s what I THINK you were trying to say with your “illustration”:
There are two ways to understand the phrase “The President” in BOTH “The President is the Commander in Chief” and “The President is married to Michelle.” We could mean
(a) The particular x such that x (in the actual world) = The President.
or
(b) The guy who, for any world W happens to have the property of being The President in W.
The first guy is the same guy in every possible world, though he doesn’t have the property of being President in all of them. The second “guy” really might refer to lots of different people in different worlds. We can call (a) type references “de re” and (b) type references “de dicto.” The first kind is intended to refer to the same entity in every possible world in which it exists, the second isn’t–in a way, that type really names some bunch of properties rather than an entity that has them, because whatever has those properties gets the title.
So much for how your illustrative examples might have been written if you wanted them to actually make sense. Now, let’s take up your “argument” paragraph. Here it is:
The statement “it’s possible that Alvin could continue to exist when Alvin’s body has been destroyed” can be interpreted de dicto, in which case it translates to “it is possible that there is an entity that fills the role of Alvin and can exist when Alvin’s body doesn’t.”
Maybe you were trying to say something like this: “It’s possible that Alvin could continue to exist when his body has been destroyed” can be taken to mean The thing that, in any world W happens to have the property of being Alvin in the actual world, can exist when his body doesn’t.”
I really have no idea if that’s what you were trying to say–I’m not sure how anybody could have a very good sense of that. But if it IS what you were trying to say, I think it’s pretty clear that it’s not at all what Plantinga meant.
My problem is the same as the one I experience when IDists try to fudge the identity of the Designer.
What we are talking about here is an immaterial soul that can exist independently form the bod, and perhaps is the “real” person.
Trying to sidestep around this form of dualism is just as effective as the sidestep dance done by Dembski, et al.
I agree. It’s ridiculous.
walto,
No, what I was trying to say is what I said I was trying to say:
Let me make my own arguments, Walt. You’re very bad at putting words in people’s mouths.
walto,
Regarding the rest of your comment, you’re confusing yourself by bringing possible worlds into the discussion.
Plantinga’s argument isn’t about what’s true in various possible worlds, it’s about what’s possibly true in our world.
You should have accepted the help, IMO. Intelligibility is useful. But suit yourself. You think your “argument” makes sense in it’s original (pristine) condition. I don’t.
walto,
The argument won’t make sense to you until you at least understand why Plantinga’s reference to Alvin is de dicto and not de re.
That is Plantinga’s crucial mistake, because it invalidates his subsequent application of Leibniz’s Law.