263 - God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational justification of Belief in God

God and Other Minds:
A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God
By Alvin Plantinga
271 pp. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1967. $8.50.

For some time now few philosophers or theologians have bothered very much with proofs for God's existence. But among philosophers things now seem to have changed. Plantinga's work represents the third major book in three years by a philosopher in which the proofs for God's existence and reasons for his non-existence are examined at great length. (The others are Wallace I. Matson, The Existence of God, 1965, and Antony Flew, God and Philosophy, 1966). It would be interesting to know why there is this interest; but at any rate, philosophers have uncovered some new twists in the old proofs and disproofs which it would be well for theologians to know. Many of them are well presented in the first two-thirds of Plantinga's book.

The novel feature of this book, however, is Plantinga's claim that although the arguments for God's existence fail, the grounds offered for our belief in other minds are also inadequate. Their inability to establish belief in other minds is similar to the inadequacy of the teleological argument for God's existence. Yet despite the weakness of the grounds one can offer, we believe in other minds and we hold that such a belief is rational. From this Plantinga makes the bold suggestion that ". . . if my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God" (p. 271).

His argument for this claim is most involved, and after considerable reflection, I am not at all sure I understand it. It is not merely that belief in God is as probably relative to one body of evidence as belief in other minds is relative to another body of evidence. (In both cases, the evidence is weak.) This is involved, but he also claims that the evidence which supports belief in other minds also supports belief in God

264 - God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational justification of Belief in God

and supports it equally as well as does order in the universe. He then concludes that since belief in God is equally well (or badly) supported by two different bodies of evidence, and since one of these bodies of evidence supports belief in other minds equally as well as it supports belief in God, then if belief in other minds is rational, so too is belief in God.

I do not follow this at all. I do not see how the data which support belief in other minds support belief in God and support it equally as well as does order in the universe. The data which support belief in other minds give no support whatever for the claim, "The universe is designed." It only removes the standard objection that even were the universe designed, its design could be the result of more than one person. This objection is removed because the evidence for other minds does not show that there is more than one person who exists. But how this, by itself, supports the proposition "God exists" equally as well as does order in the universe, I do not see.

His position also depends on the disputed view that our only viable argument (which is actually inconclusive) for the existence of other minds is based on an analogy from the experience of our own bodily and mental states. But his study of the problem of other minds, as it stands, is incomplete even for the achievement of his objective. First, almost always he uses sensations, usually pain, to rule out various alternatives to an argument from analogy for the existence of other minds. Since pain-behavior and the sensation of pain are not related by logical necessity, our case for the existence of other minds on the basis of behavior alone fails. But it is not clear that all displays of behavior, especially intelligent behavior, and the existence of other persons like myself are not related by logical necessity. One needs, then, to do more than consider pain and pain-behavior in such a study. Second, the statement of the problem of other minds uses the expressions "incorrigible" and "observation" with reference to mental events without consideration of how questionable this usage is.

Throughout the book the author follows the style of designating propositions with numerals and letters and then referring to the propositions by their symbols. This forces the reader constantly to turn several pages back to find out what it is that is under discussion. Nonetheless, it is a stimulating book and deserves careful study.

Diogenes Allen
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey