RE: Refuting Plantinga's God and Other Minds
November 1, 2013 at 8:36 pm
(This post was last modified: November 1, 2013 at 8:37 pm by Simon Moon.)
(November 1, 2013 at 8:21 pm)Maelstrom Wrote: I guess I am lost on the "not knowing whether other minds exists" part, which is ludicrous.
Am I missing something?
If another mind did not exist, I have to conclude that I am mad and imagining everyone around me.
Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.
In other words, the only thing that I can prove is that my own mind exists. It's the old 'brain in a vat" scenario. I can't prove that I could be a brain in a vat and that all of what I detect as a reality outside of my mind, including other minds, can not be proven to exist.
So, in the same way that I can't prove that other minds exist, but that it is rational for me to believe they do, it is also rational to believe that 'God' exists.
At least that's the way I read his argument.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
