The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

Philosophical Failure 43
ideal nominalists have unlimited time at their disposal and are patient
to a preternatural degree; they are, like General Grant, prepared to fight
it out on this line if it takes all summer, and if their opponents think
it necessary to undertake some lengthy digression into an area whose
relevance to the debate is not immediately evident, they will cooperate.
(Ideal realists, of course, share these features.) A successful argument
for nominalism, I said, would be an argument that any ideal nominalist
could use to turn any ideal realist into a nominalist—‘‘could’’
in the sense that, given a quiet, comfortable room with a blackboard,
and chalk enough and time, any ideal nominalist, wielding this argument,
could eventually turn any ideal realist into a nominalist; in the
end, the erstwhile realist would have to say, ‘‘All right, I give up.
The argument is unanswerable. There are no universals.’’ A moment
ago, I examined and rejected the idea that a successful philosophical
argument would be one whose conclusion followed from indubitable
premises by indisputably valid logical steps. Any argument for nominalism
that was successful by the terms of that stern criterion would, I
should think, have the power to convert an ideal realist to nominalism.
It is an interesting question whether there could be an argument
that would convert any ideal realist to nominalism but which did
not proceed by indisputably valid steps from indubitable premises to
its conclusion. I will not try to answer this question, or the more
general question of which it is an instance, since I am not going to
identify success in philosophical argument with the power infallibly
to convert an ideal opponent of the position being argued for. My
reason for rejecting this identification is the same as my reason for
rejecting the first proposal for understanding philosophical success and
failure. In my view, it is very implausible to suppose that nominalism
or any other important philosophical thesis can be supported by an
argument with that sort of power. I very much doubt whether any
argument, or any set of independent arguments, for any substantive
philosophical conclusion has the power to turn a determined opponent
of that conclusion, however rational, into an adherent of that
conclusion.
Of course, I can’t speak to the topic of unknown arguments,
arguments unknown to us, the arguments of twenty-fourth-century
philosophy. But I doubt whether any argument so far discovered by
philosophers has the power to convince just any ideally rational and
ideally patient person of the truth of any substantive philosophical