Tony of April 21, 8:20 AM wrote: "In a nutshell, what Plantinga (and others in the RE camp) claim is that natural theology has failed. And given this, one might think the failures of natural theology ought to imply that the theist thus lack justification or warrant." Perhaps Plantinga thought that in the 1960s or 70s or 80s. But by the time of "Two Dozen (Or So) Theistic Arguments" (for which I don't know the data of composition), he wrote: "I've been arguing that theistic belief does not (in general) need argument either for deontological justification, or for positive epistemic status, (or for Foley rationality or Alstonian justification)); belief in God is properly basic. But doesn't follow, of course that there aren't any good arguments. Are there some? At least a couple of dozen or so." See: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/two_dozen_or_so_theistic_arguments.pdf. Thus, at least at some point in his career, Tony's characterization of why Plantinga thinks he has to do RE isn't correct. Maybe it was what originally motivated him to do it, though.

Hi Aaron, You wrote, "But Feser gives an odd argument for mathematical Platonism, saying, for example, that 'it is not up to us to decide that the angles of a triangle should add up to 38 degrees instead of 180.' I assume that he has heard of non-Euclidean geometries, so I am curious as to exactly what he means when he says this is not up to us. Why isn't it up to us whether we adopt a Euclidean geometry or a hyperbolic geometry? What forces one choice rather than another? Or does Feser have some view on the relationship between the two which explains this?" I would guess that what Feser means is that, _given the axioms of Euclidian geometry_, it's not up to us whether the angles of a triangle add up to 180 or 38 (Rob's point in the comments is not a point against Feser, but just a strangely aggressive way of pointing out that we could call 180 degrees 38 degrees; but as even Rob admits, if we did so, we'd have to call right angles 19 degrees rather than 90 degrees. The point is, the relationship between the total number of degrees in a triangle and the number of degrees in each of its angles is constant and not up to us). I'm sure Feser would accept that it is up to us whether we accept a Euclidian or non-Euclidian geometry, and that which one we accepted would depend on our purposes. But again, given the axioms of one, certain things just follow, and it's not up to us which of them follow. As for how this fact relates to mathematical platonism, surely it's simply the old argument for platonism, which is: what grounds the truth of certain mathematical statements, or relationships among those statements? Obviously, not everyone is convinced by the arguments for mathematical platonism, but a lot of philosophers of math are. And even if you're not a platonist about mathematical objects, you can still be a realist about universals, which is Feser's main goal anyway. You also wrote, "Feser defends a realism about categories against nominalism and conceptualism by claiming that our practicies implicitly assume realism, and that nominalism and conceptualism couldn't do the job. He waves his hand at the (entirely adequate) reply available to modern nominalists and conceptualists, namely an evolutionary story of concepts (Millikan has done especially impressive work in this area). His criticism is that we need concepts to engage in evolutionary explanation in the first place, and that on this story the concepts we get from evolution have no "objective validity." Unfortunately, this is only true if "objective validity" is defined in such a way that nothing has it. The evolutionary story provides a perfectly adequate account of the origin of concepts, including providing us with reasonable justification for relying on the concepts produced by that process." I don't understand this part of your post, which seems to me to be crucial. What is the evolutionary story of concepts, and how does it constitute an adequate reply to realist criticisms of nominalism? As for your criticisms of Feser on act/potency, form/matter, etc., I think these are good. Just because they are good, though, doesn't mean they're dispositive. I think part of the problem is this: Feser is writing his book in the vein of _The God Delusion_. That is, he is polemical, tries to write in an engaging style, and tries to work the brain of his reader. His reader isn't intended to be the professional philosopher; rather, the educated layperson. Now, of course, Ed thinks he's right, and he doesn't bring up certain criticisms that you may think are obvious. But it's not as though he thinks he's right just because he doesn't bring up and respond to the criticisms. He points time and again to David S. Oderberg's _Real Essentialism_ as a place one can explore for a more philosophically nuanced discussion of these issues, and it's a book with which he largely (or even entirely) agrees. That said, it's important for you to bring up your criticisms, just as it's important for people like Gary Gutting to bring up his criticisms of Dawkins.