Apparently Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett debated a week ago at a meeting of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association. An anonymous individual live-blogged it somewhat hyperbolically (“The tension between the titans fills the room”) but the account is worth a read, even if it is clear that the blogger is biased towards Plantinga. Apparently Plantinga attempted to defend Behe and Dennett slapped him around for that.
Short anonymous blogger: Dennett was snarky, nasty and didn’t take Plantinga seriously.
That’s the sort of thing that would get PZ’s blood boiling!
There - apparently - will be audio posted at some stage.
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
The audio is linked in a comment on that thread now. It's an MP3 here.
Posted by: RBH | February 28, 2009 9:03 PM
I guess I don't see the point in debating
cdesign proponentsistscreationists. It seems like a big waste of time.Posted by: DLC | March 1, 2009 9:24 PM
Dennett is a 'titan' of philosophy? News to me.
Posted by: Argon | March 1, 2009 10:27 PM
Interesting conversation on the debate at blog.talkingphilosophy
Posted by: Michael Fugate | March 2, 2009 5:45 PM
Plantinga is a "philosopher"? That's news to me! Just another one of those "western philosophers" who have claimed 'philosophy' for theology.
Posted by: rimpal | March 6, 2009 11:13 AM
@ Rimpal
That's a bit of a stupid comment. Plantinga - whether you agree with his religious beliefs or not - *is* a well respected philosopher. Your comment merely illustrates you know nothing about "western" philosophy (whatever you mean by that).
Posted by: John Lynch
| March 6, 2009 12:00 PM
I listened to the debate. It seemed that Dennett's response and most of the Q and A strayed from (what I took to be) the key issues. For instance, do we have a defeater for all of our beliefs given Naturalism and Evolution?(as Plantinga argues). Dennett mentions a function of the human brain that destroys faulty cognitive faculties (ones that produce false beliefs) but does such a function of the brain plausibly arise from naturalistic evolution? A full human brain has a hard enough time ascertaining truth, is there really a function of the brain that knows truth so well that it destroys faulty cognitive faculties? Perhaps. However, the existence of such a function seems much more likely on Theism than on Naturalism.
Posted by: Wayne Alder | March 8, 2009 1:02 AM