(April 24, 2011 at 12:25 pm)Eleazar Wrote: Another person who assumes that I accept every argument I refer to.
That's my bad actually, I posted that before I noticed your saying you don't support the argument.
Quote:Believe it or not, there are actually theists who don't think every argument for the rationality of theism is successful!
Well that's plainly obvious

Quote:Rarely is anything in contemporary epistemology "refuted" - critiqued and challenged with counterarguments certainly, but a full-fled refutation is hard to find. Which philosophers in your view have provided this "refutation"?
I largely agree with that, but not as far as reformed Epistemology is concerned, when you can produce an argument as absurd as the Great Pumpkin Objection that is perfectly consistent with the argument then you have, in my opinion, destroyed it - An argument that can produce a potentially innumerable number of contradictory and intentionally absurd conclusions simply cannot be thought of as legitimate.
Quote:(It is often forgotten as well that "Reformed Epistemology" was originally a polemic against the previously-reigning evidentialist paradigm, and so its primary purpose was to argue against evidentialism rather than for the rationality of theism.)
That is not true, his argument, the "Reformed objection", was not against Evidentialism but Natural Theology and Classical Foundationalism. The purpose of Reformed Epistemology was to provide a cop-out for theists being unable to produce any argument for the existence of God while still calling themselves rational.
If it were truly the case that it was merely a parallel argument then Plantinga wouldn't be espousing it as a positive position, which he does. Fuck, he doesn't even claim that Reformed Epistemology demonstrates belief in God to be "properly basic" - He claims that under certain specific circumstances it "can" be properly basic.
Quote:"Rationality" and "justification" are pretty much synonymous in Plantinga's work so I don't really get your point. The Great Pumpkin Objection is certainly a fun one, but it's one that Plantinga brings up in his own work!! So if you think Plantinga managed to refute his own view, I'd be interested in knowing why you think that.
They are (or should be) synonyms in all work, ideally, that is why I have a problem with Plantinga maintaining that his belief is "rational" despite his admission that he can offer no argument or evidence in support of his belief (justification).
And so what if he raises the objection in his own work? Many scholars anticipate and try to quell objections in their publications, some times the arguments they content in their works are the very arguments that defeat their positions despite their efforts. Plantinga was not the one who came up with the objection either, it was raised prior to publication and by many different people in various forms. Anyway, it matters not if he raised the objection in his own work, what matters is that the contention stands and defeats his argument.
Plantinga simply HAS NOT provided a fully articulated and comprehensive criteria for proper basicallity and that is because he simply cannot muster it, if he could he would but that he cannot only suggests that any attempts defeat his own argument.
Quote:Again, refuted by whom? In what ways do you consider Plantinga to misunderstand how Bayesian argumentation works.
Just to name a few... Fales, Fitelson, Ramsey and Law. I have a collection of essays on the matter if you'd like, I might be able to send you the PDF.
I have no doubts that he knows how to use it, the issue is more that he uses it in a way that appears intentionally misleading, for starters he does not explain how he obtains his prior probabilities, you would think that this would be a rather serious problem, no?
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