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Platonic realism is a philosophical term usually used to refer to the idea of realism regarding the existence of universals or abstract objects after the Greek philosopher Plato (c. 427–c. 347 BC), a student of Socrates. As universals were considered by Plato to be ideal forms, this stance is confusingly also called Platonic idealism. This should not be confused with Idealism, as presented by philosophers such as George Berkeley: as Platonic abstractions are not spatial, temporal, or mental they are not compatible with the later Idealism's emphasis on mental existence. Plato's Forms include numbers and geometrical figures, making them a theory of mathematical realism; they also include the Form of the Good, making them in addition a theory of ethical realism.

Plato's own articulation of realism regarding the existence of universals is expounded in his dialogue The Republic and elsewhere, notably in the Phaedo, the Phaedrus, the Meno and the Parmenides.

Universals[link]

In Platonic realism, universals do not exist in the way that ordinary physical objects exist, even though Plato metaphorically referred to such objects to explain his concepts. More modern versions of the theory seek to avoid applying potentially misleading descriptions to universals. Instead, such versions maintain that it is meaningless (or a category mistake) to apply the categories of space and time to universals.

Regardless of their description, Platonic realism holds that universals do exist in a broad, abstract sense, although not at any spatial or temporal distance from people's bodies. Thus, people cannot see or otherwise come into sensory contact with universals, but in order to conceive of universals, one must be able to conceive of these abstract forms.

[edit] Theories of universals

Theories of universals, including Platonic realism, are challenged to satisfy certain constraints on theories of universals.

Platonic realism strongly satisfies one of those constraints, in that it is a theory of what general terms refer to. Forms are ideal in supplying meaning to referents for general terms. That is, to understand terms such as applehood and redness, Platonic realism says that they refer to forms. Indeed, Platonism gets much of its plausibility because mentioning redness, for example, seems to be referring to something that is apart from space and time, but which has lots of specific instances.

Some contemporary linguistic philosophers construe "Platonism" to mean the proposition that universals exist independently of particulars (a universal is anything that can be predicated of a particular). Similarly, a form of modern Platonism is found in the predominant philosophy of mathematics, especially regarding the foundations of mathematics. The Platonic interpretation of this philosophy includes the thesis that mathematics is not created but discovered.

Forms[link]

Plato's interpretation of universals is linked to his Theory of Forms in which he uses both the terms εἶδος (eidos: "form") and ἰδέα (idea: "characteristic") to describe his theory. Forms are mind independent abstract objects or paradigms (παραδειγματα: patterns in nature) of which particular objects and the properties and relations present in them are copies. Form is inherent in the particulars and these are said to participate in the form. Classically idea has been translated (or transliterated) as "idea," but secondary literature now typically employs the term "form" (or occasionally "kind," usually in discussion of Plato's Sophist and Statesman) to avoid confusion with the English word connoting "thought".

Platonic form can be illustrated by contrasting a material triangle with an ideal triangle. The Platonic form is the ideal triangle — a figure with perfectly drawn lines whose angles add to 180 degrees. Any form of triangle that we experience will be an imperfect representation of the ideal triangle. Regardless of how precise your measuring and drawing tools you will never be able to recreate this perfect shape. Even drawn to the point where our senses cannot perceive a defect, in its essence the shape will still be imperfect; forever unable to match the ideal triangle.

Some versions of Platonic realism, like that of Proclus, regard Plato's forms as thoughts in the mind of God; most^[which?] consider forms not to be mental entities at all.^{[citation needed]}

Particulars[link]

In Platonic realism, forms are related to particulars (instances of objects and properties) in that a particular is regarded as a copy of its form. For example, a particular apple is said to be a copy of the form of Applehood and the apple's redness is an instance of the form of Redness. Participation is another relationship between forms and particulars. Particulars are said to participate in the forms, and the forms are said to inhere in the particulars.

According to Plato, there are some forms that are not instantiated at all, but, he contends, that does not imply that the forms could not be instantiated. Forms are capable of being instantiated by many different particulars, which would result in the forms' having many copies, or inhering many particulars.

Criticism[link]

Two main criticisms with Platonic realism relate to inherence and difficulty of creating concepts without sense-perception. Despite its criticisms, though, realism has strong defenders. Its popularity through the ages is cyclic.

Criticism of inherence[link]

Critics claim that the terms "instantiation" and "copy" are not further defined and that participation and inherence are similarly mysterious and unenlightening. They question what it means to say that the form of applehood inheres a particular apple or that the apple is a copy of the form of applehood. To the critic, it seems that the forms, not being spatial, cannot have a shape, so it cannot be that the apple is the same shape as the form. Likewise, the critic claims it is unclear what it means to say that an apple participates in applehood.

Arguments refuting the inherence criticism, however, claim that a form of something spatial can lack a concrete (spatial) location and yet have in abstracto spatial qualities. An apple, then, can have the same shape as its form. Such arguments typically claim that the relationship between a particular and its form is very intelligible and easily grasped; that people unproblematically apply Platonic theory in everyday life; and that the inherence criticism is only created by the artificial demand to explain the normal understanding of inherence as if it were highly problematic. That is, the supporting argument claims that the criticism is with the mere illusion of a problem and thus could render suspect any philosophical concept.

Criticism of concepts without sense-perception[link]

A criticism of forms relates to the origin of concepts without the benefit of sense-perception. For example, to think of redness in general, according to Plato, is to think of the form of redness. Critics, however, question how one can have the concept of a form existing in a special realm of the universe, apart from space and time, since such a concept cannot come from sense-perception. Although one can see an apple and its redness, the critic argues, those things merely participate in, or are copies of, the forms. Thus, they claim, to conceive of a particular apple and its redness is not to conceive of applehood or redness-in-general, so they question the source of the concept.

Plato's doctrine of recollection, however, addresses such criticism by saying that souls are born with the concepts of the forms, and just have to be reminded of those concepts from back before birth, when the souls were in close contact with the forms in the Platonic heaven. Plato is thus known as one of the very first rationalists, believing as he did that humans are born with a fund of a priori knowledge, to which they have access through a process of reason or intellection — a process that critics find to be rather mysterious.

A more modern response to this criticism of concepts without sense-perception is the claim that the universality of its qualities is an unavoidable given because one only experiences an object by means of general concepts. So, since the critic already grasps the relation between the abstract and the concrete, he is invited to stop thinking that it implies a contradiction. The response reconciles Platonism with empiricism by contending that an abstract (i.e., not concrete) object is real and knowable by its instantiation. Since the critic has, after all, naturally understood the abstract, the response suggests merely to abandon prejudice and accept it.

See also[link]

• Essentialism
• Inherence
• Philosophy of mathematics
• Substance theory
• Truth
• Universal (metaphysics)

External links[link]

• Plato's Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology entry by Allan Silverman in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Platonism in Metaphysics entry by Mark Balaguer in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

References[link]

• Sriraman, B. (2004). The influence of Platonism on mathematics research and theological beliefs. Theology and Science, vol. 2, no.1, pp. 131-147

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
Born	Rebecca Newberger (1950-02-23) February 23, 1950 (age 62)
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Jewish
Occupation	Novelist Philosopher

Rebecca Goldstein (born February 23, 1950) is an American novelist and professor of philosophy. She has written five novels, a number of short stories and essays, and biographical studies of mathematician Kurt Gödel and philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

Life and career[link]

Goldstein, born Rebecca Newberger, grew up in White Plains, New York, and did her undergraduate work at Barnard College. She was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. She has one older brother who is an Orthodox Rabbi, and she also has a younger sister. After earning her Ph.D. from Princeton University, she returned to Barnard to teach courses in various philosophical studies. There she published her first novel, The Mind-Body Problem (1983), a serio-comic tale of the conflict between emotion and intelligence, combined with an examination of Jewish tradition and identity. Goldstein said she wrote the book to "...insert 'real life' intimately into the intellectual struggle. In short I wanted to write a philosophically motivated novel."^[1]

Her second novel, The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind (1989), was also set in academia, though with a far darker tone. Her third novel, The Dark Sister (1993), was something of a departure: a postmodern fictionalization of family and professional issues in the life of William James. Mazel followed in 1995. Properties of Light (2000) is a ghost story about love, betrayal, and quantum physics. Her latest novel is 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (2010). Goldstein has published a collection of short stories, Strange Attractors (1993), that also treated "interactions of thought and feeling," to quote the cover jacket.

Recently Goldstein has turned to biography with her books Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel (2005) and Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (2006). The books reflect her continuing interests in the relationship between the life of the mind and the demands of everyday existence, and in Jewish perspectives and history.

In addition to Barnard, Goldstein has taught at Columbia and Rutgers. She has been a visiting scholar at Brandeis University, and taught for five years as a visiting professor in the Department of Philosophy at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Goldstein lives in Boston and Truro. She divorced her first husband, physicist Sheldon Goldstein, and married^[2] Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker. She is the mother of the novelist Yael Goldstein Love and the poet Danielle Blau.

Awards and fellowships[link]

• 2011 Humanist of the Year awarded April 2011 by the American Humanist Association
• Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, 2006–2007
• Guggenheim Fellow, 2006–2007
• Koret Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought,[1] 2006, for Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us Modernity
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005^[3]
• MacArthur Fellow, 1996
• National Jewish Book Award, 1995, for Mazel
• Edward Lewis Wallant Award, 1995, for Mazel
• National Jewish Book Award for her book of short stories, Strange Attractors
• Graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College, receiving the Montague Prize for Excellence in Philosophy,
• While at Princeton University, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship
• Whiting Foundation Fellowship, 1991^[4]

See also[link]

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

Notes[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (October 2011)

• Official website
• Rebecca Goldstein, the atheist with a soul in an interview on ThoughtCast, which was also broadcast on WGBH (FM)
• Interview, April 11, 2006
• Rebecca Goldstein discusses her book, "36 Arguments for the Existence of God" on the 7th Avenue Project Radio Show
• An interview with Rebecca Goldstein, about her book "Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity" California Literary Review, June 4, 2006
• "Reasonable Doubt": an essay on Baruch Spinoza on Edge.org
• "A Kibitz on Pure Reason": A three-day dialogue on "Betraying Spinoza" between Rebecca Goldstein and Michael Weiss. Jewcy.com, March 17–19, 2007.
• Radio interview on Philosophy Talk
• On Rebecca Goldstein’s New York Times Book Review essay “Theory, Literature, Hoax”
• “Disenchanting Determinism,” commentary on Rebecca Goldstein’s 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

William Lane Craig

Born	(1949-08-23) August 23, 1949 (age 62)[1] East Peoria, Illinois[citation needed]
Era	21st-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Philosophy of religion, natural theology, philosophy of time, Christian apologetics
Influenced by Alvin Plantinga, Francis Schaeffer, Edward John Carnell, Stuart Hackett, John Hick, Wolfhart Pannenberg
Influenced J. P. Moreland, Francis Beckwith
Website	reasonablefaith.org

William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949)^[1] is an American analytic philosopher, philosophical theologian, and Christian apologist.^[2] He is known for his work in the philosophy of religion, philosophy of time, and the defense of Christian theism.^[3] One of his most notable contributions to the philosophy of religion is his defense of the Kalām cosmological argument, which is the most widely discussed argument for the existence of God in contemporary Western philosophy.^[2][4] In theology, he has also defended Molinism and the belief that God is, since Creation, subject to time.^[2][5][6]

Craig has authored or edited over 30 books, including The Kalām Cosmological Argument (1979), The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (1980), Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (with Quentin Smith, 1993), Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (with J.P. Moreland, 2003) and Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (3d edition, 2008).

Academic background[link]

Craig received a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from Wheaton College, Illinois, in 1971 and two summa cum laude master's degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, in 1975, in philosophy of religion and ecclesiastical history.^[1] He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy under John Hick at the University of Birmingham, England in 1977 and a Th.D. under Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich in 1984.^[7]

From 1980 to 1986 he was an assistant professor of philosophy at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He briefly held the position of associate professor of religious studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, from 1986 to 1987. From 1987 to 1994 Craig pursued further research at the University of Louvain, Belgium. Since 1996 he has held the position of research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University in La Mirada, California.^[7]

Work[link]

Philosophy of religion[link]

Craig's primary contribution to philosophy of religion is his revival of the Kalām cosmological argument. In The Kalam Cosmological Argument, he formulates the argument in the following manner:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.^[8]

He defends the second premise by arguing that actual infinities and the formation of an actual infinite through continual addition are metaphysically impossible. Although he recognizes that axiomatized infinite set theory is logically consistent he maintains that the existence of actual infinities in the real world would lead to absurdities. For example, David Hilbert's famous "Hilbert's Hotel" thought experiment demonstrates how a fully occupied hotel would still be able to accommodate an infinite number of guests. Craig modifies the thought experiment by introducing operations such as subtraction and shows that subtracting identical quantities from identical quantities would have non-identical remainders.^[9] Since we have no evidence of such things in the actual world, Craig maintains that actual infinities are, for all intents and purposes, metaphysically impossible. Craig also argues that the thermodynamic properties of the universe and its expansion provide more evidence in support of premise two.^[10]

Craig also develops an a posteriori argument against actual infinities which rests on the A-theory of time. He gives Bertrand Russell's example of Tristam Shandy, who writes his autobiography so slowly that it takes him one year to write down the events of one day. A similar temporal sequence would have occurred in an eternal universe. No matter how long it takes, an eternal universe would still not be 'actually infinite' and must have begun to exist.

Craig has also contributed to the problem of divine foreknowledge (the compatibility of God's omniscience with human freedom). He analyzes current discussions of time travel, retrocausality, special relativity, and Newcomb's Paradox and brings them to bear on theological fatalism (most often supported by strongly Augustinian theologies, particularly Calvinism).^[11] Rejecting fatalism^[12] he defends the middle knowledge view (also known as Molinism).^[13] According to this solution, prior to actualizing a possible world, God knows everything that does or will happen as well as how free creatures would act if placed in any particular circumstance. Craig considers that this also provides the answer to the question of how God foreknows future contingents.^[14]

Philosophy of time[link]

Craig is a presentist and defends the A-series of time. He rejects J. M. E. McTaggart's famous argument against it, describing it as "an engaging and recalcitrant brain teaser that no one takes seriously," but also argues against hybrid A-B theorists because they are all refuted by McTaggart's paradox.^[15] He argues that McTaggart's objection does not succeed as it employs an incoherent combination of a B-theoretical ontology with A-theoretical temporal becoming.^[16] According to Craig, if one adopts a neo-Lorentzian interpretation of special relativity, the A-theory can be reconciled with the theory of relativity.^[17]

In terms of God's relationship to time, Craig argues that God must exist in time if he is to be regarded as a causal agent. He rejects the view that God could exist timelessly with creation as he did sans creation on the grounds that nothing outside time could have temporal interactions with the world. Critics such as Paul Helm maintain that Craig’s objections against divine timelessness is itself incoherent because "There can be no temporal 'and then' for a timelessly eternal God."^[18] Craig responds to this charge by arguing that God's timeless and temporal phases are not related to each other as "earlier" and "later."^[19]

Apologetics[link]

Craig has written a number of works of Christian apologetics.^[20] Fellow Evangelical apologist Robert M. Bowman, Jr. (writing with Kenneth D. Boa) described his Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics as "one of the best recent textbook introductions to the subject of apologetics."^[21] Catholic Cardinal Avery Dulles has described Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (with J.P. Moreland, 2003) as "monumental," but pointed out that Catholics will not necessarily agree with it.^[20]

Craig's work as a New Testament historian focuses on a defense of central Christian doctrines, specifically Jesus' resurrection from the dead.^[20] In books such as The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus, he reviews the historical debate and provides a critical analysis of David Hume's arguments against testimony of miracles, examines New Testament material dealing with the resurrection, and concludes that the resurrection is the most plausible explanation of the historical data.^[22][23] Craig uses the Shroud of Turin as part of his case.^[20]

Other views[link]

Craig is a critic of metaphysical naturalism^[24] and New Atheism^[25] as well as a defender of Reformed epistemology.^[26] He believes that scripture does not condemn homosexuals per se but does prohibit all homosexual acts, which he considers as “sacrilegious” as well as “self-destructive” to the same degree as heroin addiction or chain smoking whether engaged in by a homosexual or a heterosexual person.^[27] Craig maintains that the theory of evolution is compatible with Christianity.^{[28][page needed]} Although he does not fully endorse intelligent design,^[29] he thinks it may be a viable alternative to evolution.^[30] He is a fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture^[31] and a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID).^[32]

Debates[link]

Craig has publicly debated atheists Richard Carrier, Robert M. Price, Sam Harris, Antony Flew,^[33][34] A. C. Grayling,^[35] Lawrence Krauss,^[36][37] Victor Stenger,^[38] Peter Atkins,^[39] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong,^[40] and Christopher Hitchens,^[41] as well as liberal theologian Gerd Lüdemann,^[42] and prominent Muslims such as Shabir Ally and Jawal Badawi.^[43] Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has refused a rigorous debate with Craig (accusing him of self-promotion and of being an “apologist for genocide"),^[44] although Dawkins participated in a six-person discussion which included Craig.^[45]

The debates with Antony Flew, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Gerd Lüdemann have been published in book form.^{[40][42][46][47]}

Bibliography[link]

• The Kalām Cosmological Argument. London: MacMillan. 1979. ISBN 1-57910-438-X / ISBN 978-1-57910-438-2
• The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz. London: MacMillan. 1980. ISBN 1-57910-787-7 / ISBN 978-1-57910-787-1
• The Son Rises: Historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Chicago: Moody Press. 1981. ISBN 978-1-57910-464-1 / ISBN 978-1-57910-464-1
• Apologetics: An Introduction. Chicago: Moody Press. 1984. ISBN 0-8024-0405-7
• The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus during the Deist Controversy. Toronto: Edwin Mellen. 1985. ISBN 0-88946-811-7
• The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom. Grand Rapids: Baker Bookhouse. 1987. ISBN 1-57910-316-2 / ISBN 978-1-57910-316-3
• The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez. Leiden: E.J. Brill. 1988. ISBN 90-04-08516-5 / ISBN 978-90-04-08516-9
• Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection. Ann Arbor: Servant. 1988. ISBN 0-89283-384-X / ISBN 978-0-89283-384-9
• Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus. Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press. 1989. ISBN 0889466165/ ISBN 978-0-88946-616-6
• Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom: The Coherence of Theism I: Omniscience. Leiden: E.J. Brill. 1990. ISBN 90-04-09250-1 / ISBN 978-90-04-09250-1
• No Easy Answers. Chicago: Moody Press. 1990. ISBN 0-8024-2283-7 / ISBN 978-0-8024-2283-5
• Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (with Quentin Smith). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1993. ISBN 978-0-19-826383-8
• The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 0-7923-6634-4 / ISBN 978-0-7923-6634-8
• Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan. Grand Rapids: Baker Bookhouse. 1998.
• God, Are You There?. Atlanta: RZIM. 1999. ISBN 1-930107-00-5 / ISBN 978-1-930107-00-7
• The Tenseless Theory of Time: A Critical Examination. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2000. ISBN 978-0-7923-6635-5 / ISBN 978-0-7923-6635-5
• God, Time and Eternity. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2001. ISBN 978-1-58134-241-3 / ISBN 978-1-58134-241-3
• Time and The Metaphysics of Relativity. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2001. ISBN 0-7923-6668-9
• Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time. Wheaton: Crossway. 2001. ISBN 978-1-58134-241-3 / ISBN 978-1-58134-241-3
• What Does God Know? Atlanta: RZIM. 2002. ISBN 978-1-930107-05-2
• Hard Questions, Real Answers. Wheaton: Crossway Books. 2003. ISBN 978-1-58134-487-5 / ISBN 978-1-58134-487-5
• God?: A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist(with Walter Sinnot-Armstrong). New York: Oxford University Press. 2003.
• Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (with J.P. Moreland). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press. 2003.
• Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (with Paul Copan). Grand Rapids: Baker Bookhouse. 2004. ISBN 0-8010-2733-0
• Reasonable Faith. Wheaton: Crossway. 1994. rev. 3rd ed. 2008. ISBN 0-89107-764-2 / ISBN 978-0-89107-764-0
• Einstein, relativity and absolute simultaneity. London New York: Routledge. 2008. ISBN 0-415-59166-X. 
• On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision. Colorado Springs: David C. Cook. 2010. ISBN 1-4347-6488-5 / ISBN 978-1-4347-6488-1

See also[link]

Biography portal

• List of American philosophers

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William Lane Craig

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Lane Craig

• Reasonable Faith William Lane Craig's personal website
• Faculty webpage
• Comprehensive Debate list
• Interviews from the program Closer to Truth
• Works by or about William Lane Craig in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Audio files at bethinking.org