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Plantinga, Epistemic Permissiveness, and Metaphysical Pluralism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Rose Ann Christian
Rose Ann Christian
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Religion, Towson State University, Towson, Maryland 21204–7097.
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Extract

Alvin Plantinga's much heralded religious epistemology is a many-faceted thing. In simplest terms, it is an attempt to free would-be rational theists from the evidentialist requirement for religious belief and to show that they are well within their ‘epistemic rights’ in taking certain beliefs about God as ‘properly basic’. In an early version of his programme, Plantinga sought to achieve both these objectives through a single strategem, namely via the overthrow of ‘classical foundationalism’, an historically wide-ranging approach to epistemology he judges to be, even today, preeminent. Plantinga's frontal attack on his self-styled opposition, however, soon proved inadequate to his task, largely because it exposed his own position to criticism and left pressing questions unanswered. By this time, of course, Plantinga has done much to reply to his critics and to address fundamental questions; yet in so doing, he has adopted argumentative manoeuvres, some quite surprising, that take him considerably beyond his original position. These developments in his proposal are central to the discussion that follows. If we are to comprehend them, however, we must begin where he did, with a critique of classical foundationalism, for in the case of Plantinga's religious epistemology, to trace genesis is to elucidate growth.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 553 - 573
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 See Plantinga, Alvin, ‘Is Belief in God Rational?’ in Rationality and Religious Belief, ed. Delaney, C. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979)Google Scholar; ‘Is Belief in God Properly Basic?’ Nous, Vol. XV, no. 1 (March 1981)Google Scholar; ‘The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology,’ in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, ed. Hendrik Hart, Johan Van der Hoeven, Nicholas Wolsterstorff (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1983)Google Scholar; ‘Reason and Belief in God,’ in Faith and Rationality, ed. A. Plantinga and N. Wolterstorff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

2 For the early version, see ‘Is Belief in God Rational?’ For the judgement that ‘classical foundationalism’ is preeminent, see ‘Reason and Belief in God,’ pp. 17, 48. In ‘Coherentism and the Evidentialist Objection,’ in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment, ed. by Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, Plantinga argues that coherentism, one of foundationalism's chief epistemological competitors, ought to be rejected.

3 ‘Is Belief in God Rational?’ p. 12.

4 Ibid., pp. 25–26.

5 In ‘Is Belief in God rational?’ Plantinga actually leaves open the question of whether the classical foundationalist can render his seemingly incoherent position coherent. In ‘Reason and Belief in God,’ pp. 56–63, 75–76 he repeats his original argument, but concludes with the stronger condemnation here quoted.

6 Plantinga suggests the parallel between the critique of Positivism and his own strategy in ‘Reason and Belief in God,’ pp. 74–75.

7 ‘Reason and Belief in God,’ p. 17. William Alston criticizes this contention in ‘Plantinga's Epistemology of Religious Belief’, in Alvin Plantinga, ed. J. E. Tomberlin and P. Van Inwagen (Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company, 1985), pp. 294–296Google Scholar. Plantinga replies to Alston's criticism in the same volume, pp. 389–93.

8 ‘Is Belief in God Rational?’, p. 27.

9 All of these elements are brought together in ‘Reason and Belief in God.’

10 For an early gesture in the direction of reliabilism, see ‘Is Belief in God Rational?’ p. 24; for suggestive remarks about community and training, see ‘Reason and Belief in God,’ p. 85.

11 Gowen, Julie, ‘Foundationalism and the Justification of Religious Belief,’ Religious Studies 19, pp. 398.Google Scholar

12 Robbins, J. Wesley, ‘Is Belief in God Properly Basic?’ International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 14, p. 246.Google Scholar

13 ‘Reason and Belief in God,’ pp. 74–78.

14 Ibid., p. 74.

15 Ibid.

16 For an extended discussion of rationality construed in terms of epistemic obligation and rights, see ‘Reason and belief in God,’ pp. 30–34. For a focused application of this approach to theistic belief, see pp. 78–79 of the same essay. For the distinction between weak and strong rationality, see this essay again, p. 85.

17 Ibid., p 74.

18 Ibid., p. 75.

19 Ibid., p. 76–77.

20 Ibid., p. 76.

21 Ibid., p. 77.

22 Ibid., p. 76.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid., p. 77.

25 Ibid., p. 79.

26 Ibid., p. 80.

27 Ibid., p. 77.

28 Ibid.

29 For other attempts to spell out what is involved in Plantinga's inductive procedure, see Hanink, James G., ‘Some Questions About Proper Basicality,’ Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1987, pp. 17–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Quinn, Philip L., ‘In Search of the Foundations of Theism,’ Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 4, October 1985;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMalino, Jonathan, ‘Comments on Quinn,’ Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 4, October 1985, pp. 488–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Plantinga's responds to Quinn's discussion of the inductive procedure in ‘The Foundations of Theism: A Reply,’ Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 3, No. 3, July, 1986, pp. 302–03Google Scholar, but he does nothing to elaborate its workings.

30 Ibid., pp. 77–78.

31 Ibid., p. 76.

32 Ibid., p. 78.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., pp. 80–81.

35 Ibid., pp. 65–68, 80–81.

36 Ibid., p. 66.

37 Ibid., pp. 66–90.

38 Ibid., pp. 81–82. Plantinga is careful to make the distinction, in the case of common sense beliefs as well as in the case of theistic belief, between concrete propositions and the more abstract ones they imply (‘I see a tree’ implies ‘There are trees.’) Having made this distinction, he elects to speak ‘loosely,’ as it is usual to do, in terms of general existential propositions.

39 Ibid., p. 66.

40 J. Wesley Robbins, who characterizes Plantinga's position in these terms in ‘Is Belief in God Properly Basic,’ appreciates that Plantinga can offer such a reply. He finds Plantinga to be of ‘two minds,’ sometimes inclining in the direction of objective conditions of proper basicality, other times falling back on what is ‘community relative.’ (See pp. 244–45.) Robbins makes no effort to integrate Plantinga's ‘two minds’ and focuses on the latter tendency. Thus, his evaluation.

41 Ibid., p. 78.

42 Malino, in his reply to Quinn, succinctly states a similar argument, as I discovered after having formulated my own. See ‘Comments on Quinn,’ p. 490.

43 ‘Reason and Belief in God,’ p. 78.

44 Ibid.