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/Archive 01 — October 2006 –

Removal of WikiProject Intelligent Design tag

It's about time to adress the WikiProject ID tag. I had a look at other arguments against naturalism. The article on the Kalām cosmological argument f.e. doesn't have a Wikiproject ID tag although it has been put forward by William Lane Craig. Why should EAAN have a tag? The burden of proof obviously lies with Hrafn and Guettarda. Their only suggestion that did not involve Plantinga as a person was the discussion of EAAN in Robert Pennock's book. They never pointed out a passage or sentence where EAAN is connected to ID. The problem is that this clearly fails the wikipedia verifiability criterion: "The source cited must clearly support the information as it is presented in the article. The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question." So clearly a text is needed and not just a table of contents or the fact that something is mentioned in a book (alongside theistic evolution in this particular case). Also exceptional claims require exceptional sources. Exceptional claims are: "surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources". As far as I can see none of the numerous responses published in philosophy journals made the claim that EAAN is related to ID. This means in this case we need very good sources, not just an average source. A reference to a book (not a text in the book) without any reason for the inclusion of the article while other topics outside the reach of the ID Wikiproject were also covered in the book seems to be a below average source. Clearly the same goes for Plantinga presenting the Argument at an ID conference. If no better source is provided, I'll deleted the ID tag because of OR and WP:V. --Student of philosophy (talk) 12:16, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of sources

In this edit SoP adds "by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross" to the statement that "EAAN is considered to be part of the intelligent design movement's attack on naturalism", which is cited to Section 5 of Pennock's book. While this section includes essays by Plantinga, Ruse, Failes, Fitelson and Sober, it does not include anything by Forrest and Gross.

In the same edit, he attributes a statement to Beilby in a chapter by Plantinga himself. Beilby is the book editor; attributing statements in a chapter by Plantinga to the editor of the book is misrepresenation. Guettarda (talk) 17:13, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the corrections, I added more specific information. I also corrected your statement concerning the ID-EAAN relation, "is considered" without any further information is clearly too general and misleading. --Student of philosophy (talk) 17:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

EAAN is considered to be part of the intelligent design movement's attack on naturalism by...

• Robert T. Pennock, Branden Fitelson, Elliott Sober, Michael Ruse (also in The Cultures of Creationism) & Evan Fales. (Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics)
• Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross (Creationism's Trojan Horse)

I think that list's lengthy enough not to require a listing of who considers it. Hrafn_Stalk(P) 17:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I had a quick look at the source and couldn't find any statement concerning the nature of EAAN or its relation to ID in this book. Since Misplaced Pages requires valid sources we need the pages where this is noted. A mere interpretation would not be enough clearly. Since I don't see any connection of EAAN and ID, this seems to be your job. Please add the necessary information.

--Student of philosophy (talk) 17:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Inclusion of material on EAAN in a book on "Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics" is clear indication that the authors of the material and the editor of the book considered EAAN to be part of ID. The claim is cited to the chapter containing this material. What you "don't see" appears to be the result of wilful blindness, so I don't really see any point in me discussing this any further with you. Hrafn_Stalk(P) 17:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Theistic evolution is also included in the book, yet it is not related to ID in the sense required by the Wikiproject. Until you provide a quote that clarifies why EAAN was included or how it is related to the topic of the book, your conclusion seems to be original research.--Student of philosophy (talk) 17:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

"Theistic evolution is also included in the book, yet it is not related to ID in the sense required by the Wikiproject." I have already addressed this tendentious point. Your claim of original research is likewise tendentious. Hrafn_Stalk(P) 18:06, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

• You said that theistic evolution was included as critics of ID. Adherents of ID share their view of how evolution happened and their critique of ID will be identical to the one of naturalists (see Francis Collins arguments for example). So their arguments will simply be redundant if they are included for their critique of ID. My guess is that they are included because they fit into the topic of theism, naturalism and how organisms came into being. And my guess is that the same goes for EAAN. EAAN with evolution as its premise fits perfectly (as said earlier) into the framework of theistic evolution and less well into the ID framework. It fits perfectly into the topics of theism, naturalism and how organisms came into being. Given all the other arguments supporting the claim that EAAN is not as an argument related to EAAN this seems to be a very plausible interpretation.
• Also as far as I can see EAAN was not presented by Plantinga in the book. Isn't the only entry by him on methodological naturalism (please correct me if I'm wrong, didn't read the article yet)? It then seems only natural to cover his attack on metaphysical naturalism too.--Student of philosophy (talk) 18:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
• I just educated myself on the Verifiability criterion. This is a quote: "The source cited must clearly support the information as it is presented in the article. The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question." So clearly a text is needed and not just a table of contents or the fact that something is mentioned in a book (alongside theistic evolution in this particular case). Also exceptional claims require exceptional sources. Exceptional claims are: "surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources". As far as I can see none (maybe with the exception of Ruse, but that's not entirely clear) of the numerous responses published in philosophy journals made the claim that EAAN is related to ID. This means in this case we need very good sources, not just an average source. A reference to a book (not a text in the book!) without any reason for the inclusion of the article while other topics outside the reach of the ID Wikiproject were also covered in the book seems to be a below average source. If you fail to provide a better source we'll have to delete any ID reference according to the Verifiability criterion: http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Verifiability

--Student of philosophy (talk) 07:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

C.S. Lewis

Why is there a section on C.S. Lewis in this article? The section is only sources to Lewis' work, and no sources connect it with Plantinga's EAAN. The entire discussion appears to be original research. Any reason why it should be in the article? Guettarda (talk) 05:33, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

The section is not on C.S. Lewis but on his argument from reason. The argument from reason, Repperts argument against naturalism and EAAN are considered to be related arguments. Beilby writes in his foreword to the essay collection on EAAN:

"First of all, Plantinga's evolutionary argument bears affinites to the arguments of C.S.Lewis in Miracles (especially chapters 3 and 13) and Richard Taylor in Metaphysics (chapter 10), although neither develops their argument nearly as fully as Plantinga has." (Interesting enough C.S.Lewis accepted the theory of evolution) I think I'll add two more passages on Taylor's and Reppert's argument sometime soon. --Student of philosophy (talk) 06:39, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, so there's a source for some of this. But is it in any way salient? The section says that it is "only vaguely similar". OK. But we don't include "vaguely similar" things in articles.

The article currently dedicates 1300 characters to Lewis' argument, or about the same as is given to Robbins and Fales, and as a level 2 subheading...in other words, putting it on the same level as "Plantinga's argument" or "Responses by critics". Given the tenuousness of the connection, I don't see how this belongs here in this fashion. Guettarda (talk) 15:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

My aim is to inform people about the content and history of this argument (and I'd rather leave all the sociological fuzz about EAAN out of the article). It then makes a lot of sense to mention Lewis and sketch the argument. I see your point about proportions, but there is a minimal length of text required to sketch an argument and to show the relevant sources. I think it's not distracting the way it is at the moment. But since you point this out I'd think about cutting or deleting the passage on Ruse. I reckon there have been around 40 peer reviewed articles on EAAN and about 12 have been answered by Plantinga. Many of them were written by famous philosophers like Fodor, Alston, Merricks and O'Connor. And among them were also philosophers of science and biology like Ramsey to whom Plantinga responded. Ruse contribution doesn't stand out in those ranks and hasn't been answered by Plantinga (or anyone else afaik). I think we could replace him with Tooley 2008 to get a more recent and better known article. Also Tooleys answer is a lot more penetrating and more to the point which could be interesting for the readers. What's your opinion on this?--Student of philosophy (talk) 16:43, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

My opinion of this is that we sort out the issue at hand. So far we have a passing mention by Beilby who mentions affinities. What we really need is a source that says that Lewis' work played a major role in the development of Plantinga's idea. And even then, to justify a stand-alone top-level section like this, we'd need strong support for an integral role for Lewis. Guettarda (talk) 17:33, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Here's another paragraph by Victor Reppert: "The argument I will be presenting in this book will attempt to answer that question in the affirmative. This argument is often advanced against materialism or determinism. For example, the argument is employed against materialism in the writings of Kant. However, it was developed as an argument for accepting theism as opposed to naturalism in the last century by British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, and in the 1940s by Lewis. It was this argument that Elizabeth Anscombe criticized in her famous encounter with Lewis at the Oxford Socratic Club, and as a result Lewis revised his argument in the second edition of his book Miracles. Contemporary philosophers who have employed this argument against physical determinism include James Jordan and William Hasker. Those who have developed it into an argument explicitly for theism include Richard Purtill and J.P.Moreland. More recently, Alvin Plantinga has defended a version of this argument." (quote from C.S. Lewis's dangerous Idea - In Defense of the Argument from Reason).

Plantinga himself writes in the final footnote of Warrant & Proper function: "Victor Reppert reminds me that the argument of this chapter bears a good bit of similarity to arguments to be found in chapters III and XIII of C.S.Lewis' Miracles, the argument also resembles Richard Taylor's argument in Chapter X of his Metaphysics." Based on those sources I'll remove your tag in the Lewis' section. --Student of philosophy (talk) 18:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

"They are similar" does not mean "Lewis played a major role in the development of this idea". Guettarda (talk) 19:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone claimed that. And that's as far as I can see not the reason why there is a passage on the argument from reason. Maybe we could make a passage called "earlier statements of the argument" or something like that, but I'm not quite certain if they should be called different versions of one argument. The current passage seems to be a really good description: "The general claim that naturalism undercuts its own justification was argued by C. S. Lewis in the third chapter of his book Miracles" --89.217.227.107 (talk) 19:54, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Removal of the tag

The tag says:

An editor has expressed a concern that this article lends undue weight to certain ideas relative to the article as a whole. Please help to discuss and resolve the dispute before removing this message.

"Please help to discuss and resolve the dispute before removing this message." You've made no attempt to resolve the dispute, so please restore the tag. Guettarda (talk) 19:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Ruse

But since you point this out I'd think about cutting or deleting the passage on Ruse. I reckon there have been around 40 peer reviewed articles on EAAN and about 12 have been answered by Plantinga. Many of them were written by famous philosophers like Fodor, Alston, Merricks and O'Connor. And among them were also philosophers of science and biology like Ramsey to whom Plantinga responded. Ruse contribution doesn't stand out in those ranks and hasn't been answered by Plantinga (or anyone else afaik). I think we could replace him with Tooley 2008 to get a more recent and better known article. Also Tooleys answer is a lot more penetrating and more to the point which could be interesting for the readers. What's your opinion on this?--Student of philosophy

1. If you want to get 'discussion' of an issue for which you are templating the article, then don't stick it in the middle of a thread on an unrelated issue.
2. Ruse is one of the more prominent philosophers of science working on the evo/creo issue -- so is a relevant view to discussing an argument, from a creationist philosopher, on why evolution is a 'refuter' for philosophical naturalism.
3. From what I can tell, there's been considerable back-and-forth on this and/or related issues between Ruse & Plantinga.
4. If you want to include other critical discussion of the EAAN, as well as or instead of existing material, then you're free to propose them (with full citation, proposed text and argument for their prominence)

Hrafn_Stalk(P) 09:38, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

1. I'd be interested in the back and forth between the two since Ruse seems to be taking EAAN as an argument against evolution. Can you give any source for this?
2. It may be that Ruse is famous for his work in the evo/crea debate but I don't see how this would make him stand out among the people who have answered Plantingas argument. If it is for his competence in philosophy of science, then I think there are more prominent and challenging answers available. Right now it seems like his answer is more notable than Fodors, Alstons, Tooleys (which is not mentioned at all) and Merricks which is misleading.--Student of philosophy (talk) 10:28, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

1. No, I can't. I've just seen it alluded to in reading up on the matter.
2. "If you want to include other critical discussion of the EAAN, as well as or instead of existing material, then you're free to propose them (with full citation, proposed text and argument for their prominence)"

Hrafn_Stalk(P) 11:44, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Archiving

The page was both too long, so I archived old discussion. That still left a page that was over 160k, so I removed sections that had turned unproductive and were not actively related to article content. Guettarda (talk) 03:02, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

1. Beilby p.204

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