Theistic conceptualism (about logic)

The classical-theist view that logical laws are grounded in the necessary, eternal nature of a divine mind, rather than in a free divine choice or a mind-independent abstract realm.

Theistic conceptualism holds that logical laws are not free-floating abstract objects (platonism) nor human conventions, but reflect the necessary, eternal nature of a divine mind — the way any mind's own basic structure of thought is not a further fact about the world, but a precondition of thinking at all, except here it is God's mind rather than a human one.

Its main advantage over platonism is closing the Benacerraf access problem: if a mind (yours) coming to know necessary truths that trace to another mind (God's) is intelligible in the way mind-to-mind understanding always is, there is no mystery of a causally inert abstract realm reaching into a physical brain. Its own open cost is different: it has to argue why a specifically theistic, personal mind is required as logic's ground, rather than merely some necessarily-existing mind or structure in general — an argument that has to be made, not assumed by naming the position.

Sources

  • Greg Welty & James Anderson, "A Calvinist Response to Theistic Conceptual Realism" (2013), on the theistic-conceptualist alternative to platonism about abstract objects

Related entries

Atlas entries are written from sources Debby has read, not from memory. They explain a thing; they do not settle an argument. The arguments are in the Library.