my reaction is that the whole proposed debate hinges somehow on the proposition that some ideas are "true" and on the notion that we can meaningfully distinguish between thinking that corresponds to "true" ideas and thinking that is merely useful, whether the underlying ideas are "true" or not
But such a distinction cannot be made in scientific work: science does not aim at ideas that are "true" -- rather it aims at ideas that are predictively useful. It is, for example, entirely pointless to argue whether it is "true" that planets orbit the sun along ellipses with the sun at one focus: the scientific test, of this intellectual picture, is simply that it is predictively useful
Now, a naturalist might indeed sometimes use the word "true" but then means "predictively useful." But then to argue with naturalists, Plantinga proposes to use "true" in a manner that does not correspond to the manner by which naturalists use the word. This is guaranteed to lead to an entirely inconclusive discussion
"True" is actually a very tricky word, with many pitfalls. In mathematics, for example, is "true" synonymous with "provable"? If it is not, you will probably encounter significant Platonistic baggage; if it is, then most of modern mathematics may evaporate, leaving us a bizarre and incredibly difficult logical landscape
= new reply since forum marked as read