Alvin Plantinga

From ResearchID.org, a nexus for researching Intelligent Design

Alvin Cornelius Plantinga was born on 15 November 1932 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Plantinga won a scholarship to Harvard University, but left in 1951 to study at Calvin College (Grand Rapids), where William Harry Jellema was teaching philosophy. Following his time at Calvin, Plantinga studied at the University of Michigan from 1954-1955, and received his doctorate from Yale University (1955-1958). He began teaching at Wayne State University, then spent almost 20 years at Calvin College before moving to the University of Notre Dame.

He is currently John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

Argument that evolutionary naturalism is incoherent

Plantinga has argued that evolutionary naturalism is incoherent[1]. To this end, he quotes Darwin as follows:

With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind...?|Charles Darwin|Letter to William Graham, Down, July 3rd, 1881. In The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Including an Autobiographical Chapter, ed. Francis Darwin (London: John Murray, Albermarle Street, 1887), Volume 1, pp. 315-316.

Plantinga's argument contends that natural selection, as it is currently understood, is not thought to produce in organisms the ability to reliably perceive the external world — let alone construct accurate cosmologies. He quotes contemporary philosopher of mind and philosophical naturalist Patricia Churchland to buttress this claim.

She insists that the most important thing about the human brain is that it has evolved; this means, she says, that its principal function is to enable the organism to move appropriately: Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive...Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival [Churchland's emphasis]. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.|Patricia Churchland|Quoted in Alvin Plantinga, "Naturalism Defeated"


Since according to philosophical naturalism, the theory of philosophical naturalism itself was conceived by evolved human beings, Plantinga continues, it is highly unlikely to be an accurate perception of the external world.[2] Theistic approaches, whether evolutionary or otherwise, would not suffer the same fate.


Bibliography

External links

Note: A full bibliography of writings published before 1985 can be found in "Bibliograpy of Alvin Plantinga", James E. Tomberlin and Peter Van Inwagen (eds) Alvin Plantinga, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985, pp. 399-410.

Retrieved from "http://www.researchid.org/wiki/Alvin_Plantinga"