Events
Our 'Irrational' Past | Thursday 13 Mar | Chris Oldfield, Faraday Philosophy | IAS Seminar Room C0.02 (Hybrid)
Talk title: Newman, Plantinga and Darwin's Doubt
Abstract:
In his An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent John Henry Newman gave us a way of thinking about doubt, assent and inference that has been lost sight of. In the contemporary philosophy of mind and epistemology philosophers have tended to think of faith and doubt as equal/opposite positions or states of mind situated on a sliding scale from unbelief through degrees of credence to fully justified, warranted, true belief or knowledge. In Newman's way of thinking, I will argue (following Antognazza 2024) that this way of thinking rests on a profound mistake, which is exhibited by Alvin Plantinga's reconstruction of Darwin's doubt as an instance of Bayesian reasoning, or a premise in his argument against naturalism.
Hybrid seminar: please to receive a link
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