I posted a number of links to articles on this argument in another thread - I'll bring them over when I get back to my PC.

Quick response: No, Russell's objection fails because the eternal truths in question are not Narrowly Logical truths such as the Law of Non-Contradiction; instead they're Broadly Logical truths pertaining to universals. An example might be the eternal holding of the BL truths 'No Object can be both Red all over and Green all over' or 'Orange is closer to Red than Green' at times or on possible worlds where there are no instances of those colours.

Importing relevent material posted elsewhere:

DanielCC wrote:

EDIT: May as well throw this in. The notion of universals or concepts fulfilling the role of universals existing in the Divine Mind forms part of a much neglected argument for God's existence, namely the Augstinian-Leibnizian Proof from Eternal Truths. Since it’s not often mentioned I’ll include a run-down of some references on the subject:
 
Chapter 7 of R.M. Adams’ Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist
 
E.J. Lowe – A Modal Version of the Ontological Argument
 
(Ignore the title. The argument Lowe gives is Aristotelean Realist in form)
 
Quentin Smith - The Conceptualist Argument for God's Existence
 
(Smith develops the argument in a Nominalist vein.)

Brian Leftow - 'One Step Towards God'
 

Constituent VS Relational Ontologies & Platonism VS AristotelianismThe last paragraphs of this touch on the issue.

AKG wrote:

Does anyone know what exactly Russel means when he says that truths can't exist in the mind that has them and why this is an argument against the eternal truth argument?

Russell is attacking a view them present at the time among both Kantians and Positivist Empiricists known retrospectively as 'Psychologism' on which the laws of Logic e.g. the Law of Non-Contradiction, Modus Ponens et cetere et ceera are merely 'Laws of the Thought', ways we are conditioned or predisposed to think, and thus do not have objective reality - that is it's not true that 'X cannot be Z and Not-Z at the same time' only that we cannot think that former proposition as true. This view was assailed by Russell's contemporaries Frege and Husserl.

Russell is assuming that the Argument from Eternal Truths works along these lines only with God in the picture e.g. that the Law of Non-Contradiction is only true because the Divine Mind contemplates it as such. But this is false: the argument, at least at its strongest, does not claim the laws of formal logic deponent on the Divine Mind - instead it makes claims about the sort of necessity that holds between relations of universals. It takes the Aristotelian or more accurately Scholastic (though certain Middle Platonists too held this account of Divine Ideas) view of universals on which said entities exist either in their instances or in a mind which grasps them*. Truths like 'Red is closer to Orange than Blue' are necessary, though not in the formal 'Analytical' sense of logical principles, and if we want to do full justice to this necessity must be true in all possible worlds - but red or blue objects do not exist in all possible worlds and neither do contingent minds. The only other option we are left with is a necessary mind, one which exists in all possible worlds too.

Russell of course being a Platonic Realist can just object to the account of universals given.

*In both cases they are 'objective' in the sense of being really the case.

Last edited by DanielCC (10/30/2015 6:41 pm)