A plausible plausibility structure (3)

In the remainder of these posts I shall argue that the argument from design is convincing when it is understood within a plausible ‘plausibility structure’ and to this end I shall identify criteria for such a structure and the range of design factors that such a structure needs to accommodate.

Newbigin argues that conflict between two views “will not be settled on the basis of logical argument”. Instead “[t]he view will prevail that is seen to offer – both in theory and practice – the widest rationality, the greatest capacity to give meaning to the whole of experience”. How can we judge which plausibility structures deliver this breadth of rationality? I want to suggest that we can use the same criteria as are used in vindicating a hypothesis. Tom Wright has explained how a hypothesis gains its own vindication:

“… by showing how its essentially simple line works out in detail, and by showing, conversely, how the manifold details fit within it. It helps, too, if one can show that the strengths of other scholarly hypotheses are retained, and the weaknesses eliminated … The hypothesis must be explored as a hypothesis. Its vindication will come, like that of all hypotheses, in its inclusion of data without distortion; in its essential simplicity of line; and in its ability to shed light elsewhere.”

Next, I wish to develop the aspect of Wright’s criteria that deals with fitting in the manifold details (while retaining the strengths of other hypotheses but eliminating their weaknesses) by use of the notion of dialectic developed by Alasdair MacIntyre. This has three features:

“First, it involves the learning of a second language, which we learn to speak almost as fluently as our own. Otherwise, we are always in danger of assimilating difference and otherness, imaging that the Other can be understood purely within our own terms of reference. We must be intellectually well-prepared to engage with other traditions and practices. Second, it involves locating the internal problems within that tradition, by that tradition’s own standards and criteria, and showing why those problems and the questions they seek to address are possibly irresolvable within those traditions on their own terms. Traditionally this is called “apologetics”. Third, it requires that our tradition is able to address both the lacunae within the other tradition and more satisfactorily resolve the problems that exercised that tradition.”

By these means a wide range of data can be included without distortion and light shed elsewhere.
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Olivier Messiaen - Transports de Joie.