Alex Rosenberg

Alex Rosenberg (b. 1946) is R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University, where he has also chaired the philosophy department. Trained at the City College of New York and Johns Hopkins (PhD 1971), he has worked primarily in philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of economics, with influential textbooks and monographs including 'The Structure of Biological Science' (1985) and 'Philosophy of Social Science.' His work defends a strong physicalist and reductionist naturalism, arguing that the methods and findings of the natural sciences exhaust legitimate knowledge.

In 'The Atheist's Guide to Reality' (2011), Rosenberg extends this scientism to argue that physics fixes all the facts, leaving no room for God, objective purpose, intrinsic moral truths, or the propositional content commonly attributed to thought. He embraces 'nice nihilism' regarding morality and an eliminativist stance on intentional mental states. The book provoked extensive critical response from theists and atheists alike: Alvin Plantinga, Thomas Nagel, and Massimo Pigliucci have rejected its scientism as self-undermining or overreaching, while Daniel Dennett, broadly sympathetic to naturalism, has criticized its eliminativism about content.

Rosenberg has also engaged William Lane Craig in formal debate on God's existence (Purdue, 2013). Beyond the God question, his 'How History Gets Things Wrong' (2018) applies cognitive science to argue that narrative history is systematically unreliable.