God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God was originally published by Cornell University Press in 1967. An edition with a new preface by Plantinga was published in 1990 (ISBN 978-0801497353).
The book explores the rationality of belief in God, as conceived in the Hebrew-Christian tradition. In Part, I, Plantinga examines a number of traditional arguments for God's existence and concludes that none successfully demonstrate God's existence. In Part II, he considers and rejects some major arguments against belief in God, including the problem of evil, the paradox of omnipotence, and verificationism. Finally, in Part III, he explores various analogies between belief in God and belief in other minds. He concludes that these two beliefs are in the same epistemic boat: if one is rationally justified, so is the other. Since belief in other minds is clearly rational, Plantinga argues, so is belief in God.
The book has the following chapters:
Part I: Natural Theology
Part II: Natural Atheology
Part III: God and Other Minds
Scholarly reaction[edit]
Michael A. Slote in The Journal of Philosophy[2] considered that "[t]his book is one of the most important to have appeared in this century on the philosophy of religion, and makes outstanding contributions to our understanding of the problem of other minds as well".
According to the philosopher William Lane Craig, God and Other Minds helped to revitalize philosophy of religion after the palmy days of logical positivism by applying "the tools of analytic philosophy to questions in the philosophy of religion with an unprecedented rigor and creativity."[3]
Plantinga's response to the problem of evil – the so-called free will defense, which argues that it is possible that God could not have created a world with a better balance of good over evil than does the actual world – provoked considerable scholarly discussion.[4]