Anscombe vs C.S. Lewis at the Socratic Club
A young analytic philosopher rebuts a senior Christian apologist on naturalism
Venue: Oxford Socratic Club, Somerville College.
The argument that allegedly broke C.S. Lewis's career as an apologist (whether or not it did).
At the Oxford Socratic Club on 2 February 1948, the young Cambridge-trained analytic philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe read a paper titled "A Reply to Mr C.S. Lewis's Argument that 'Naturalism' is Self-Refuting." Lewis's *Miracles* (1947) had argued that naturalism is self-refuting because, if all events including the formation of beliefs are merely natural causal sequences, then the belief in naturalism itself is just such a sequence and has no claim to truth. Anscombe distinguished carefully: causal explanation of belief-formation is compatible with belief's being justified by evidence; Lewis had conflated different senses of "irrational" or "invalid." The exchange was decisive — Lewis revised the relevant chapters of *Miracles* for the 1960 edition and is generally taken by those present to have lost the encounter. Whether the loss "broke" his apologist phase (as the older biographical tradition held) or whether he simply moved on to other interests (the more recent revisionist view) remains contested.
Historical Context
Anscombe was 28, a young Wittgenstein student; Lewis was 49, the most famous Christian apologist in Britain, fresh from the success of *The Screwtape Letters* and the BBC broadcasts that became *Mere Christianity*. The Socratic Club was a venue for serious Oxford-philosophical engagement with religious questions; the encounter was much discussed in subsequent biographies.
Parties
Lewis's argument that naturalism is self-refuting conflates the causal explanation of belief-formation with the rational evaluation of beliefs; these are different and a belief can be both causally produced and rationally justified.
Key arguments
- Distinction: "ground" (logical, justifying) vs "cause" (physical, explanatory) — the same belief can have both.
- Lewis's "irrational cause" terminology obscures the relevant distinction; what makes a belief unjustified is not its having a cause but its lacking adequate grounds.
- Many true beliefs are causally produced (by perception, by neural processes); this does not undermine their truth or justification.
- The argument as Lewis presents it depends on conflating different senses of "valid" and "irrational."
Allied schools
(Pre-Anscombe) If naturalism is true, every act of reasoning is just a natural causal process; on naturalism, there is no place for valid reasoning to provide knowledge of truth, including knowledge of naturalism itself.
Key arguments
- Naturalism, if true, applies to itself; reasoning to naturalism is itself a natural process, which on naturalism produces no genuine knowledge.
- Therefore naturalism, if true, is unknowable; it is self-undermining as a doctrine to be believed.
- Theism, in contrast, allows for a non-natural source of valid reasoning (a divinely created rational mind).
- (Post-Anscombe, in the 1960 revised edition of *Miracles*) Lewis substantially modifies the argument, distinguishing "ground-consequent" from "cause-effect" relations.
Allied schools
Dimensions Engaged
Observer
Observer · Knowledge Extent: is causal explanation of belief-formation incompatible with rational justification of belief?
Verdict in retrospect
Anscombe's critique was substantively correct; Lewis acknowledged this by his subsequent revision of *Miracles*. Modern philosophy of mind and epistemology takes for granted the distinction Anscombe drew; many naturalists (including Christian naturalists like Alvin Plantinga in different formulations) continue to develop versions of the original Lewis argument that take Anscombe's critique into account. Plantinga's "Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism" (1993) is the major modern reformulation.
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Further reading
- Lewis, *Miracles* (1947; revised 1960), ch. 3
- Anscombe, "A Reply to Mr C.S. Lewis's Argument that 'Naturalism' is Self-Refuting" (1948; in *Collected Philosophical Papers* II, 1981)
- Plantinga, *Warrant and Proper Function* (1993), ch. 12