# Victor Reppert American **philosopher** (b. 1953) best known for giving C.S. Lewis's argument from reason its modern analytic form. His book *C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason* (InterVarsity Press, 2003) took an argument many philosophers had written off and restated it in several careful versions that critics still have to answer. The core idea he defends is simple to state. If every belief we hold is fully produced by non-rational physical causes, then whether we hold a belief has nothing to do with whether it is true or well reasoned. That would undercut trust in all reasoning, including the reasoning that leads to naturalism. Reppert argues that rational inference is better explained if mind is basic to reality than if it arose from mindless matter. See [Argument from Reason](/codex/argument-from-reason/). ![Black-and-white photograph of C. S. Lewis in a dark suit, lighting a pipe](/codex/assets/cs-lewis-portrait-1957.jpg) _C.S. Lewis, whose argument from reason Reppert set out to defend. Photograph by John S. Murray, 1957. Image: public domain, via Wikimedia Commons._ --- ## Biographical sketch - **Education:** Ph.D. in philosophy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1989). - **Teaching:** has taught philosophy in Arizona, including at Glendale Community College. - **Public writing:** has long run a philosophy blog under the title *Dangerous Idea*, where much of the back-and-forth over the argument from reason has taken place. --- ## Major works - ***C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason*** (InterVarsity Press, 2003). The title answers Daniel Dennett's *Darwin's Dangerous Idea*. Reppert sets out several distinct versions of the argument, including arguments from intentionality and from truth, and argues they combine into a cumulative case. He also revisits the 1948 debate in which Elizabeth Anscombe criticised the first edition of Lewis's *Miracles*, and argues that Lewis's revised argument survives her objection. - **"The Argument from Reason,"** in *The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology* (eds. William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland, Wiley-Blackwell), the standard reference-work statement of the argument. - **"Confronting Naturalism: The Argument from Reason,"** in *Contending with Christianity's Critics* (B&H Academic, 2009). - **"Defending the Dangerous Idea,"** in *C.S. Lewis as Philosopher* (IVP Academic, 2008). - **Journal articles,** including "The Lewis-Anscombe Controversy: A Discussion of the Issues" (*Christian Scholars' Review*, 1989), "The Argument from Reason" (*Philo*, 1999) and "Several Formulations of the Argument from Reason" (*Philosophia Christi*, 2003). --- ## The argument and its critics Reppert's work drew sustained replies from naturalist philosophers, which is part of why it matters: - **Keith Parsons and Jim Lippard** answered his 1999 *Philo* article, and he replied in the same journal. - **A 2003 *Philosophia Christi* symposium** set his formulations against critics including Theodore Drange and Keith Parsons, with William Hasker among the contributors. - **Richard Carrier** wrote a long critical review of *C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea* for The Secular Web (2004), appealing to cognitive science and computational theories of mind. Reppert replied, and Darek Barefoot published a defence of the argument's core against Carrier. The debate turns on whether a physical system can be caused to believe something *because* it is true and follows from good reasons, rather than merely because of prior physical causes. Reppert's answer is that physical causation and rational inference are different kinds of relation, and that naturalism cannot make the first do the work of the second. See [Intentionality](/codex/intentionality/) and [Argument from the Reliability of Reason](/codex/argument-from-the-reliability-of-reason/) for the related argument of [Alvin Plantinga](/codex/alvin-plantinga/). --- ## Apologetic significance - **He brought Lewis back into the journals.** The argument from reason had often been treated as refuted by Anscombe. Reppert's work showed that it can be stated in forms that serious naturalists engage at length. - **He supplies the cumulative form.** Rather than resting everything on one version, he offers several, so that a critic who answers one has not answered the case. - **He links mind and reason.** His work sits naturally beside the [Argument from Consciousness](/codex/argument-from-consciousness/): one presses on subjective experience, the other on rational inference, and both ask whether a mindless universe can produce a mind. --- ## See also - [Argument from Reason](/codex/argument-from-reason/), the argument he defends - [Argument from the Reliability of Reason](/codex/argument-from-the-reliability-of-reason/), Plantinga's evolutionary cousin - [Argument from Consciousness](/codex/argument-from-consciousness/), the sister argument from experience - [C.S. Lewis](/codex/c-s-lewis/), the argument's original author (*Miracles*, ch. 3) - [Alvin Plantinga](/codex/alvin-plantinga/), fellow critic of naturalism's account of reason - [Daniel Dennett](/codex/daniel-dennett/), whose *Darwin's Dangerous Idea* the book title answers - [Intentionality](/codex/intentionality/), the aboutness problem at the heart of one version - [Reductio ad Absurdum](/codex/reductio-ad-absurdum/), the logical form of the argument's sharpest version ---