Epistemology, Religious [addendum]

The most significant development in religious epistemology at the beginning of the new millennium was the completion of Alvin Plantinga's trilogy on warrant and religious knowledge. Plantinga's earlier work on Reformed epistemology focuses on the question of whether religious beliefs can be justified, in the sense that they can be accepted without violating any epistemic duties. His later work is concerned with warrant, defined as that which, added to true belief, enables such belief to qualify as knowledge. Plantinga argues convincingly that warrant is distinct from justification and also from rationality, in any of the several senses of the latter term. His own view is most akin to reliabilism, but he argues that standard versions of reliabilism face debilitating objections, and comes out instead for a definition of warrant in terms of the proper functioning of a person's epistemic faculties.

For these faculties to function properly, they must function as they were designed to function, and they must be functioning in an appropriate environment, the kind of environment for which they were designed. (The notion of design seems already to bring something like a theistic assumption into play. Plantinga, however, concedes provisionally that evolution may be thought of as "designing" people's epistemic equipment, though in the end he thinks this cannot be spelled out satisfactorily.) Furthermore, a person's faculties must be such that, in those circumstances, they function reliably, so as to produce as outputs a high proportion of true rather than false beliefs. Plantinga's formal definition of warrant is: "A belief has warrant for a person S only if that belief is produced in S by cognitive faculties functioning properly (subject to no dysfunction) in a cognitive environment that is appropriate for S's kind of cognitive faculties, according to a design plan that is successfully aimed at truth" (Plantinga 2000, p. 56).

Given this epistemological framework, can belief in God be warranted when this belief is held in a basic way and not derived from other held beliefs? Plantinga's answer to this is yes. He holds that there is a component in the cognitive equipment of every person that is specifically designed to produce a belief in God, given certain "inputs" that are commonly available in our ordinary environment. Such inputs would include such situations as when people contemplate the majesty of the starry heavens, find God speaking to them in the Bible, or feel disgusted because of something they did wrong. This component in thehuman cognitive makeup Plantinga calls—following John Calvin—the sensus divinitatis (sense of divinity). When the sensus does its work, and produces in someone a belief in God, it is doing exactly what it is designed to do. Furthermore, the sensus is reliable because the belief that it regularly produces—namely, a belief that there is a God—is in fact true. (Malfunction, leading to a distorted conception of God, is of course possible.) Belief in God, produced in this way, satisfies all the conditions for being warranted, and when the belief is held with sufficient firmness the believer may be correctly said to know that there is a God.

Plantinga wishes to claim warrant also for the specific doctrinal beliefs of Christianity—for the "great things of the Gospel" (Plantinga 2000, p. 80). Considerably simplified, the model he presents is as follows: God, desiring to reveal himself, has become the principal author of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which contain his message to humankind. The individual who becomes aware of the teachings of the Gospel, through reading them or otherwise hearing of them, may come to have faith in these teachings; this faith is produced by the Holy Spirit, and has both a cognitive dimension (the teachings are "revealed to our minds") and a volitional/affective dimension (they are "sealed to our hearts"). One then comes to believe these teachings in a basic way; they are not inferred from anything else one believes, but as Jonathan Edwards said, the spiritually enlightened "believe the doctrines of God's word to be divine, because they see divinity in them" (Plantinga 2000, p. 259). A somewhat surprising (and perhaps implausible) consequence of this is that the fact that these doctrines are taught in Scripture does not constitute any part of the warrant they have for the typical believer. Plantinga argues, however, that beliefs so formed can be—and in typical cases are in fact—warranted when held in a basic way.

This model has been described on the assumption that the Christian faith is true, but that is an assumption Plantinga qua philosopher is not entitled to. Accordingly, his formal conclusion is not that belief in Christianity is warranted, but that, if Christianity is true, then belief in its truth is probably warranted. (If it is not true, then God has not endowed humans with the sensus divinitatis, nor is he the principal author of Scripture, nor is faith produced in believers by the Holy Spirit, as the model claims. In this case, belief in the truth of Christianity has other sorts of causes, and is probably not warranted.) Plantinga concludes that the de jure objection, which claims that Christian belief is unwarranted, cannot stand on its own without support from the de facto objection, that Christianity is in fact false.

As one may expect, all of Plantinga's principal claims have met with vigorous criticism. Internalist epistemologists such as Richard Fumerton regard his externalist proper functionalism as overly permissive in the beliefs it counts as warranted. Another criticism is directed at the somewhat negative and defensive character of his apologetic. Plantinga defends the propriety of holding certain kinds of basic beliefs, but this may be of little help to those (including many believers) who do not actually find themselves believing these things in a basic way. Richard Swinburne (2001), along with a number of others, has urged that Christian apologetics ought to go beyond this and present reasons that could be convincing to the inquiring nonbeliever. Plantinga, however, considers that determining the truth of Christian belief lies "beyond the competence of philosophy" (Plantinga 2000, p. 499).

Plantinga, Alvin.

Kvanvig, Jonathan, ed. Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology; Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.

Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant, the Current Debate. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Plantinga, Alvin, R. Douglas Geivett, Greg Jesson, Richard Fumerton, Keith E. Yandell, and Paul K. Moser. Symposium on Warranted Christian Belief. Philosophia Christi 3 (2) (2001): 327–400.

Swinburne, Richard. "Plantinga on Warrant." Religious Studies 37 (2) (2001): 203–214.

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