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Nine of Clubs
the moral, experiential and pragmatic family

The Argument from Intellectual Values

Arthur James Balfour
Theism and Humanism

The Argument from Intellectual Values, card face
EvidentialConcludes that a feature of the world is better explained by one hypothesis than by a named rival.
Argument form
Inference to the best explanation (naturalism cannot sustain trust in reason; a reasoning mind can)
Concludes to
Better explanation (trust in reason; explanans is a reasoning mind behind nature)
Premise ground
Epistemic (an origin where nothing reasons cannot sustain trust in reason)
Modal strength
None (comparative explanation)
What it licenses
  • None (a reasoning mind behind nature is the explanans)
Period
Twentieth Century (1915)
Tradition
British philosophical theism

Further reading

This formulation is ours, composed from the primary source and compressed to fit the card; the argument admits of other statements. Objections have been made to every argument in the deck; where one is linked above, it is chosen by us, not written by us.

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