In this uniformly excellent volume, Hugo A. Meynell mounts an argument for the existence of God as an explanation for the intelligibility of the world.

This argument is not the same as the recent (though also interesting) case for "intelligent design" mounted by William Dembski. Meynell's case is more general, and applies even in the absence of any evidence of such design (though of course such design is consistent with his thesis).

Meynell argues, basically, that (a) it is ultimately incoherent to take the "real world" to be anything other than what we get to know by right reason, and that (b) the existence of a necessarily-existing intelligent Creator is the best explanation for the intelligibility of that "real world." My short summary does not do it justice, but those are the (very) bare bones of his cosmological argument.

Meynell's exposition is extremely thorough. He begins by considering, and curtly dismissing, the common claim that arguments for God's existence are unimportant. He then spends a chapter considering standard arguments and counter-arguments for God's existence before setting forth his own argument.

The meat of that argument is in chapter three, in which he argues at length for the claim I have summarized briefly above: that the "real world" is an intelligible, coherent system which we come to understand through the proper use of reason. Chapter four then passes to God as an explanation for such intelligibility.

Meynell then closes with a cleanup chapter of "paralipomena" ("things left out" of the discussion to that point) and a two-page conclusion summarizing his argument. An appendix deals with A.J. Ayer's arguments against theistic belief in _The Central Questions of Philosophy_.

Meynell does not deal with the "presuppositionalist" view that all such arguments are question-begging, but it must be acknowledged that, strictly speaking, his argument is not _deductively_ valid. However, it does not need to be; what he is actually doing is setting out the absolute, axiomatic presuppositions of reason itself -- and this process is not deduction. (A full reply to the presuppositionalists on this point would take us rather far afield, but we may note briefly that the presuppositionalist argument collapses all reasoning into deductive logic -- a move I do not find terribly credible.)

I could probably manage to disagree with Meynell here and there if I tried. For example, he is at great pains to make clear that his view does not amount to "idealism," but here I think he is relying on a more restrictive view of "idealism" than I would prefer to take. (Nicholas Rescher remarks somewhere that any philosophy denying the existence of unknowable things-in-themselves not susceptible to reason is at bottom a form of idealism; I concur. Meynell seems to be rejecting only _subjective_ idealism, a rejection in which I happily join him.)

Be that as it may, overall this is _the_ best book I know on the argument to an intelligent God from the existence and axiomatic efficacy of human reason. It deserves to be reprinted and widely read by philosophers and theologians of all stripes.

Meynell is a vary lucid writer and he is quite good at giving a general overview of the philosophical positions that he thinks are incorrect.

This book includes arguements against extreme and moderate scepticism. On the first of these scepticisms his arguements are cogent. He does not, however, overcome the force of Hume's arguements for moderate scepticism.

Next, Meynell explains his version of the correspondence theory of truth, based on how we come to know. Sense-data are taken to be metaphysical simples, from which we articulate intelligable theories about the world. These theories approximate reality, Meynell claims, because they can predict how things would have been if they were true. Since we may combine this feature of expirimentation with intelligent thinking and our experience of a designed world we can have knowledge about the world.

Although Meynell does not state Theism at the beginning of the book his theory does not seem plausable without it, due to the fact that his realism is permeated with idealism. If there were no Necessary being what reason do we have to hold that the world, reached through our experience of knowing, is a world for knowing? In short, Meynell's world looks like a world made to be known. His order of presentation leads me to think that he wanted to show the reverse of this point: that because the world is knowable it is made.

Meynell then claims that this view of correspondence implies a radical Cartesian internalism and a Thomistic metaphysics of immaterial essences along with mind\body interactionist deulism. By the end of the book his realism surely does require these positions, however I cannot see how Meynell arrives at his Thomistic conclusion from his initial chapterrs on truth, reality and data. It seems to me that Meynell's love for God makes him exagerate the implications of his premises. Naturally, my claim here instanciates both the fallacy of "to the man" and the so-called "genetic fallacy." Here I hope not to argue against Meynell, but simply to give my impression of his book.

I also think he fails to explain the metaphysics of causation, in most of the particular details of his Lonerganian philosophy.

This book is fun and worth reading because of its broad outlook and its innocent, though not uninformed, and speculative view of philosophical problems. Indeed, correspondence theories of truth are not dead, as long as we have articulate and acute Englishmen like Meynell to endorse them. Meynell also seems like a good person.