Tyler Wunder

The main focus of my research is the religious epistemology of Alvin Plantinga. Throughout his lengthy career, Plantinga has argued with ever-increasing sophistication that religious beliefs (in particular, theism and more recently Christian theism) can be completely reasonable, rational, justified, intellectually respectable, etc., even if there are no good arguments for the truth of those beliefs. Unfortunately, sophisticated arguments are not necessarily good arguments. Presently I am working on Plantinga’s ‘A/C model’ of warranted basic theism to see how best to level a ‘Great Pumpkin objection’ against it.

• I have shown Alvin Plantinga that his infamous ‘Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism’ cannot be construed in terms of objective probability (as he has preferred to construe it for the last 20 years) lest it, combined with his bedrock assumption of logically noncontingent theism, entail necessarily false theism. Sadly, there is no award for this, although I would argue it’s a significant philosophical achievement.

I’m open to supervising students in my main area (the philosophy of religion), but untenured faculty are not typically allowed supervising duties. If you are interested in having me as a supervisor, you should contact the department chair and/or the relevant adviser (graduate or undergraduate) for their advice/permission.

• Wunder, Tyler. “Alvin Plantinga on Paul Draper’s Evolutionary Atheology: Implications of Theism’s Noncontingency.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. (2013)
• Wunder, Tyler. “Anti-naturalism and Proper Function.” Religious Studies. (2008)