Like Glen (Ropella) I too intuit that there is no such absolute as "fact".
>From this review, it seems that Mr. Platinga's system is based on "warranted" facts .. and he has previously published a 3 part series on what warranted facts.are. Mr Platinga's system seems similar to an Indic system called "pramana" (Sanskrit) .... a formal system to validate and certify observations / intuitions etc . For eg. the term for "certificate" In the Hindi language is "praman patra" or proof letter. I dare say similar epistemologies exists in other philosophical systems but I got stuck at Descartes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pramana http://www.hindupedia.com/en/Pramana (Both offered without certification of authenticity). On 9/17/12, Roger Critchlow <r...@elf.org> wrote: > Reading > http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/sep/27/philosopher-defends-religion/ > was > a rather odd experience this week, mixed in with Sam Bacile, the Salafists, > the zombies, and whatever. > > The review is by a non-believer (Thomas Nagel) who finds the book, written > by a believer (Alvin Plantinga), very interesting, even though he doesn't > believe it. Plantinga's day job is analytic philosophy, so he gets very > precisely into what he thinks it is that his faith and his beliefs do for > him. Finally, the main argument is sort a grand slam of creationism: we > wouldn't be able to correctly figure out how the world works if the deity, > more specifically the deity that Plantinga believes in, wasn't helping us > along the way. Why would natural selection by itself care anything about > the truth? > > As the reviewer says: "The interest of this book, especially for secular > readers, is its presentation from the inside of the point of view of a > philosophically subtle and scientifically informed theist—an outlook with > which many of them will not be familiar." > > -- rec -- > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
