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Naturalism, knowledge, and nature: A...

Peters, Richard Allen.

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Naturalism, knowledge, and nature: Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism in relationalist cosmological perspective.

Record Type:	Language materials, printed : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Naturalism, knowledge, and nature: Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism in relationalist cosmological perspective./
Author:	Peters, Richard Allen.
Description:	389 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 71-12, Section: A, page: .
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International71-12A.
Subject:	Religion, Philosophy of. -
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=3430428
ISBN:	9781124297415

Naturalism, knowledge, and nature: Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism in relationalist cosmological perspective.
Peters, Richard Allen.

Naturalism, knowledge, and nature: Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism in relationalist cosmological perspective. - 389 p.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 71-12, Section: A, page: .

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University, 2010.

Alvin Plantinga is a distinguished contemporary philosopher of religion who has produced numerous arguments defending a conservative Christian theology, including one he calls the "evolutionary argument against naturalism." This argument is so named because it argues ironically from Darwinian evolutionary theory against naturalism, which Plantinga defines roughly as the doctrine that no supernatural beings exist. The anti-theistic metaphysic Plantinga has in mind is more specific than his use of the term naturalism suggests, however: the object of his attack is in fact materialism, which this dissertation analyzes, following Whitehead, as the doctrine that proper things are what they are independent of other things. The opening chapters of this dissertation argue that Plantinga's evolutionary argument is largely successful against materialistic naturalists. As Plantinga argues, materialism undermines its own claims to authority (1) by virtue of being unable to affirm plausibly that our beliefs causally influence our behaviors, and (2) by being constrained to identify reproductive fitness rather than truth as that which is normative for the development of cognitive faculties. Chapters 4 through 6, however, explore the possibility that another variety of naturalism, not considered by Plantinga, can answer his argument. Relationalism names that family of speculative metaphysics descended especially from the work of Alfred North Whitehead, and the chapters that follow draw especially on Robert Neville's unique contribution to the tradition. Relationalism is a metaphysical position in many ways diametrically opposed to materialism: it is the doctrine that things are what they are in relationship to other things. Just because of this difference, this dissertation argues, relationalism succeeds where materialism fails. Chapter 4 argues that relationalism can account for the causal influence of beliefs on behaviors as materialism cannot. Chapter 5 develops various elements of a relationalist metaphysic and anthropology to show that our cognitive faculties can be aimed at truth. And chapter 6 explicates a theory of truth which shows that truth is attainable by cognitive processes that are shaped by natural evolutionary processes, which is what Plantinga had denied.

ISBN: 9781124297415Subjects--Topical Terms:

1017774
Religion, Philosophy of.

Naturalism, knowledge, and nature: Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism in relationalist cosmological perspective.
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