CHAPTER
3
The
Religious Epistemology of Alvin Plantinga
In the last chapter I focused on the epistemology of theistic evidentialism, and especially that epistemology as used as a premise in the evidentialist objection to theistic belief. The critique of evidentialism presented by Alvin Plantinga has prepared the way for a consideration of a position rival to classical evidentialism - so-called Reformed epistemology, or more precisely, the Reformed epistemology of Alvin Plantinga. This alternate way of thinking about the rationality of belief in God will involve the systematic negation of the sorts of evidentialist requirements which were developed in chapter 2. Plantinga’s religious epistemology is a complex one which has undergone significant development over the last 12 years, and I intend to treat both its explicit and implicit claims at its two main stages of development.[1]
I.
Properly
Basic Theistic Belief
Over against the tradition of classical evidentialism, Alvin Plantinga claims that theistic belief can be properly basic - rational without the satisfaction of evidentialist requirements. Belief in God can rationally belong to the foundations of one’s noetic structure. Plantinga’s proper basicality thesis is developed within the framework of the sort of modest foundationalism articulated in chapter 1.[2]
A.
Theistic Foundationalism
This new version of foundationalism is often called Reidian Foundationalism because of its roots in the 18th century Scottish common-sense philosopher Thomas Reid (although its prominence as the model of justified belief among advocates of properly basic theistic belief has led to such descriptions as “Reformed,” “theistic” or “theological” foundationalism).[3]
Reid’s
epistemology, usually noted for its emphasis on the principles of common sense, gives an
illuminating account of the nature and origin of human belief-dispositions, an account set
in the larger context of answering Humean skepticism.
Reid was critical of philosophers who too frequently fell prey to an undue
epistemic partiality in selecting “this” or “that” source of belief as
the criterion by which all other beliefs were to be judged. Reid’s point is that we
have no more reason for trusting reason than we do for trusting our other sources of
beliefs, and if we must doubt one of our sources of belief, then we will have to doubt
them all. Reid’s argument shows that
there is no argument for restricting proper basicality to beliefs with epistemic
immunities, that doing so is arbitrary epistemic partiality. The reason why such beliefs
are given foundational status is that they are generated by well-established practices of
belief formation. It is precisely this point that requires the extension of the class of
properly basic beliefs to include memory beliefs, beliefs that imply the existence of an
external world, beliefs about the mental states of other persons, beliefs about the
future, testimonial beliefs, and perceptual beliefs.
According
to Reid, the human mind is fitted with a variety of belief-forming mechanisms, so that in
appropriate circumstances these belief-forming dispositions are triggered. For instance, some beliefs about the past are
formed on the basis of memory experience, and beliefs about the physical world are formed
on the basis of sensory experience. These beliefs are immediate beliefs since they are formed without
inference from or mediation through other beliefs. In
contrast to immediate beliefs, there are mediate
beliefs, beliefs formed by the reasoning-disposition, according to which we are disposed
to accept propositions on the basis of propositional
evidence. Moreover, Reid recognized the
importance of an initial principle of credulity with reference to the various sources of
beliefs we have discussed. Over against a principle of incredulity (that beliefs, or
belief-forming practices, are to be considered “guilty until proven innocent”),
Reid emphasized the importance of beliefs (or belief-forming dispositions) being innocent
until proven guilty. We are constructed such that we simply cannot discard beliefs at will. Although this
doesn’t in itself entail that our immediate beliefs are likely to be true, it does
follow that we are deontologically justified in holding them (assuming, that is, one
cannot be obliged to do what one cannot do). But even if justification is not taken to be
necessary for knowledge, it may be that on Reid’s account we know many of our immediate beliefs. Reid’s
account suggests that these beliefs are produced by belief-forming mechanisms which are
triggered by a kind of evidence under the appropriate experiential circumstances. The
conjunction of the reliable operation of these mechanisms (or their proper function) and
the experiential circumstances in question might be thought of as offering an account of
knowledge, or a nondeontological account of what transforms true belief into knowledge.
Reidian
foundationalism provides an appropriate framework for laying out an epistemology of
religious belief rival to theistic evidentialism, one which takes seriously the Reformed
theological commitment to the proper basicality of theistic belief. Plantinga’s move
is to utilize a Reidian epistemological framework to argue for the proper basicality of
theistic belief.[4] Plantinga’s main
argument is directed at showing that “it is perfectly rational to take belief in God
as basic - that is, to accept theistic belief without accepting it on the basis of
argument or evidence from other propositions one believes” (Plantinga 1985b, pp.
55-56).
Plantinga
claims:
[P] There are some people S* such that (a) S* believe in God, (b) S*’s belief in God is rational, and (c) S*’s belief in God is not based upon reasons (adequate or otherwise).[5],[6]
First,
an important clarification is needed as to (a) in [P].
Plantinga (1983a, pp. 80-82) makes it clear that the actual theistic belief that is going
to be properly basic is not God exists or there is such a person as God. The kind of beliefs
that are taken as basic are actually beliefs like
(1)
God is speaking to me.
(2)
God has created all this.
(3)
God disapproves of what I have done.
(4)
God forgives me.
(5)
God is to be thanked and praised.
Although
Reformed epistemologists loosely speak of taking belief in God as basic, to be more
accurate the clause belief in God should be
taken to refer, not to the general proposition God
exists, but to the types of beliefs given above - each of which self-evidently entails
that God exists. I shall hereafter speak of various beliefs (or belief) that Pt to refer
to the sorts of lower-grade theistic beliefs Plantinga has in mind. In such a case, belief
that God exists would turn out to be nonbasic. It would be based on beliefs like (1)-(5).
It might be thought that this difference is important for assessing evidentialism; but since the evidentialist requires theologically
neutral or unbiased reasons to ground theistic belief proper, he would not regard these
beliefs that Pt as adequate grounds for the belief that God exists. He would require that
these lower-grade beliefs themselves be supported by reasons, presumably reasons for
believing that there is a God.
Secondly,
(b) in [P] must be unpacked a bit. The sort of
rationality involved here is prima facie
rationality. It can be overridden by sufficient reasons to the contrary. Moreover, the sense of rationality Plantinga has
in mind in [P] may be construed as either deontological or axiological. He takes it that the evidentialist
challenge is frequently couched in terms of intellectual obligations. He is anxious to
argue that a theist may be intellectually in the clear, within his epistemic rights, in
believing in God, even if his belief is basic. A person who believes that Pt in a basic
way does not necessarily violate any epistemic duties. In 1983a (p. 52) Plantinga also
notes that rationality can be taken in the sense of “the possession of epistemic
excellence” or “the avoidance of an epistemic defect.” The Reformed
position is that “one who takes belief in God as basic is not thereby violating any
epistemic duties or revealing a defect in his noetic
structure (p. 72). I have noted this notion of epistemic non-defectiveness in chapter
2 in relation to evidentialism, where Plantinga labels it “axiological”
rationality. I will develop this idea of non- defectiveness more thoroughly in Part III
with Plantinga's more recent notion of warrant and proper function.
B.
Nonpropositional Rationality Making Properties
The
general formulation needs a bit more unpacking with reference to condition (c) in [P]. How can a belief in God be basic and yet rational? As Reid maintained, from the fact that
a belief is not produced by the reasoning-disposition, it does not follow that it is
groundless and irrational. The reasoning disposition is only one type of disposition
activated by a certain kind of evidence - reasons (i.e., other beliefs or knowledge). But
reasons are only one kind of ground - propositional
evidence. There is also another type of ground for belief that is nonpropositional, but
which is evidence nonetheless. Reid spoke of
various kinds of evidence that could be classified as nonpropositional, the evidence of
sense, testimony, consciousness, memory, and axioms. These days modest foundationalists
usually postulate several plausible rationality
or justification-conferring grounds for
immediate beliefs: (i) immediate experience of what the belief is about, (ii) facts about
the origin of the belief, or, in certain cases, (iii) the mere truth of the belief.
Plantinga (1993b, pp. 192-193) speaks of impulsional-evidence;
that is, in certain circumstances or under certain conditions we have the disposition or
inclination to form certain beliefs. Such putative grounds of belief do not (at least not
directly) involve other beliefs, but rather they involve things like being appeared to a
certain way and a felt attractiveness, fittingness, inclination toward or disposition to
form the belief in question, or some kind of attractive sensuous phenomenology.
We
can say that there are two-levels of evidence: second-level
evidence (which is propositional) and first-level evidence (which is
nonpropositional). This can be further explicated by speaking of beliefs as the output of
realized functions and relevant input. A belief has second-level evidence when the
relevant belief-forming mechanism takes other beliefs as input and yields beliefs as
output. A belief has first-level evidence when it is the output of cognitive functions
that take nonpropositional circumstances as input. The rationality of immediate beliefs
would be, at least in part, a function of the epistemic adequacy of these nonpropositional
grounds or conditions. This may turn out two ways depending on the sense of rationality
one is assuming. Reid clearly thought that since most of our beliefs were the output of
belief-forming processes over which we do not have any direct voluntary control, it is
hard to see how we could be guilty of flouting any epistemic obligations. The position seems to secure
deontologically rational immediate beliefs. I also noted though that it is plausible to
take his position as establishing a stronger claim. (i)-(iii) above may actually be
sources of immediate knowledge.
If theistic belief is an immediately justified belief, then there will be nonpropositional justification-conferring conditions. In 1983a Plantinga lays out three paradigmatic properly basic beliefs: I see a tree, I had breakfast this morning, and that person is in pain. In each of these cases the belief is typically basic, but not groundless. In the case of sensory perceptual beliefs, I am appeared to in a certain way, and my being appeared to in such and such a way grounds the belief. There are phenomenological conditions accompanied by a sort of felt attractiveness or inclination to form certain beliefs under those conditions. In such condition(s) C (simple or complex), a person S will be rational or justified in believing that p in a basic way (where C will naturally vary with p). Now Plantinga originally held that it was a person’s being appeared to in these characteristic ways which sufficiently confers on the person the right to believe the corresponding proposition (1989a, p. 79). He now holds that a person is justified in holding B on some occasion just if: (1) a person has an epistemic right to trust a basic source of belief X except where the person has a defeater for a deliverance of that source (i.e., roughly, a reason to believe that the belief is false or the source untrustworthy), and on this occasion (2) B is a deliverance of source X and (3) S has no reason to think that B is false or produced in some unreliable fashion.[7]
Plantinga
thinks that these conditions are sometimes satisfied for theistic belief. According to
Plantinga, there is a disposition to form belief in God in certain experiential
circumstances.
Plantinga
(1983a) writes:
Calvin holds that God “reveals and daily discloses himself in the whole
workmanship of the universe,” and the divine art “reveals itself in the
innumerable and yet distinct and well ordered variety of the heavenly host.” God has
so created us that we have a tendency or disposition to see his hand in the world about
us. More precisely, there is in us a disposition to believe propositions of the sort this
flower was created by God or this vast and intricate universe was created by God when we
contemplate the flower or behold the starry heavens or think about the vast reaches of the
universe. (p. 80)
These
widely realized conditions and circumstances trigger belief in God. But the grounds are
not limited to just these sorts of conditions, but include things like the reading of
Scripture, the feeling of guilt, or a sense of God’s presence or his speaking to us.
As already noted, it is not the belief that God exists that is actually properly basic in
these circumstances, but it is a range of beliefs about God’s attributes and actions
which self-evidently entail God’s existence. There are a variety of beliefs that Pt
that involve grounding in experiential (broadly speaking) justification-conferring
circumstances, in many cases analogous to the way in which we form sensory perceptual
beliefs.
William Alston (in 1991c) has carefully developed the type of
phenomenological conditions discussed by Plantinga. Alston argues that we can understand
religious experience as kind of perception of God, a nonsensory perceptual experience of
God analogous to our sensory perceptual experience of the world. Alston targets a certain
class of beliefs, M- beliefs (“M” for “manifestation”).[8] These beliefs are “beliefs to the effect that God is doing
something currently vis-à-vis the subject - comforting, strengthening, guiding,
communicating a message, sustaining the subject in being - or to the effect that God has
some (allegedly) perceivable property - goodness, power, lovingness” (Alston 1991c,
p. 1). M-beliefs involve the direct experiential awareness of God. In much the same way
that objects in the environment are presented to a person’s consciousness in sensory
perception resulting in beliefs about the external world, M-beliefs are the result of God
being presented to a person’s consciousness. Moreover, as sensory perceptual beliefs
can be construed as being the output of a disposition or habit of belief formation related
in a certain way to relevant input, Alston develops the notion of the formation of
M-beliefs within the larger sphere of a functioning, socially established, practice of
M-belief formation. The upshot of this is that the doxastic practice of M-belief formation
can form an adequate experiential ground for various beliefs about God. Plantinga, though,
is not thinking of the direct experiential presentation of God, even though some of his
examples approach the experiential conditions described by Alston.[9] Rather, we have been
designed by God to form a broad range of beliefs about him when we find ourselves in
widely realized experiential circumstances. A person will be justified in holding theistic
belief in these circumstances on some occasion provided she has no reason to believe that
her theistic belief is false or that the source of her belief is unreliable.
The
sort of formulation we are left with then turns out to be something like.
[P1] There
are some people S*
in some circumstance C and at some time T who believe that Pt, where (a) S*’s
belief that Pt is justified and (b) S*’s
belief that Pt is not based on reasons (adequate or otherwise), and (c) C excludes S*’s
having defeaters for their belief that Pt.
So
when the Reformed epistemologist claims that belief in God can be a justified belief even
though it is not based upon propositional evidence, he means the following. First, for
some people certain beliefs that self-evidently entail God’s existence are the
deliverance of an immediate source of belief, given the appropriate sort of conditions or
circumstances (which we might loosely call evidence, impulsional evidence). Secondly, S
lacks reasons to believe that the deliverance of this source is either false or
unreliable. Moreover, Plantinga’s claim
should be understood as a negation of the propositional evidence-possession requirement.[10]
The theist is said to be “within his epistemic rights in
believing in God’s existence even if he has no argument or evidence at all”
(1983a, pp. 30). Equally, I have been concentrating on structuralist evidentialism, but
the rejection of that implies a rejection of dialectical formulations of the evidentialist
requirement as well. “What the Reformers meant to hold is that it is entirely right,
rational, reasonable, and proper to believe in God without any evidence or argument at
all” (1983a, p. 17). In fact, Plantinga writes: “It is not that such a person is
justified or rational in so believing by virtue of having an implicit argument. . .No, he
does not need any argument for justification or rationality. . .he is perfectly rational
in accepting belief in God as basic in the utter absence of any argument, deductive or
inductive” (p. 67). I take it, then, that Plantinga’s basic claim is invariant
under evidential-requirement substitution instances canvassed in the last chapter. In
other terms, where (c) in [P] is replaced by
any one of the substitution instances we noted in chapter 2, the claim to proper
basicality remains in place. So, if (c) is replaced by either (d) a dialectical
evidentialist requirement or (e) an evidence possession requirement, theistic belief will
still be basic under the appropriate conditions.
Plantinga’s
proper basicality thesis, though, is actually stronger than I have outlined thus far. One
might think that a belief is properly basic only if there is evidence for the proposition,
evidence available in a person’s epistemic community, though not necessarily evidence
possessed by the person in question, let alone the causal basis for their belief. Anthony
Kenny (1992) advocates this notion. According to Kenny, there is a sense in which a belief
that p is properly basic only if there is evidence for p. Unlike the evidentialist
requirements discussed earlier, this position does not require either an evidence-basis
requirement or an evidence- possession requirement for the person in question. Kenny says “a belief may be basic in the sense of not
being held on the basis of reason, but yet defensible to others by the giving of
reasons” (p. 26). This actually forms a premise in Kenny’s own argument:
“Roughly speaking, a belief can be properly held as basic, without evidence, only if
it is rationally defensible. If the existence
of God is to be something justifiably held as basic, it must be defensible by
argument” (p. 69). Call this an evidence-availability
evidentialist requirement. It leads to an alternative account of proper basicality.
But Plantinga’s position rules this out. He explains that
“Barth joins Calvin and Bavinck in holding that the believer in God is entirely
within his rights in believing as he does even if he does not know of any good theistic
argument (deductive or inductive), even if in fact no such argument exists”
(Plantinga 1983a, pp. 71-72).[11] In
1985b Plantinga asks: “But why suppose that the theist needs evidence to be rational?
Suppose he doesn't have any evidence; suppose in fact there isn't any. How does it follow
that his belief is not perfectly rational?” (p. 59). This theme, which runs
throughout Plantinga’s work, is also emphasized by Stephen Wykstra in his essay
“Toward a Sensible Evidentialism” (1989). Wykstra takes the crux of Reformed
epistemology to be, not merely that one’s belief in God can be rational without an
evidential basis, but that theistic belief can be rational even without there being any
evidence available for it.
Calvinians will insist that there does not need to be an evidential case available for theistic belief in order for it to be epistemically adequate. . . .What Calvinians really want to say is that belief in God. . .is evidence non-essential: even if no evidential case is available for it, theistic belief suffers no epistemic defectiveness and should not be seen as being in big (or little) doxastic trouble. (Pp. 433-434)[12]
What
Wykstra says here with respect to epistemic defectiveness is held by Plantinga regarding
the sort of conditions required for a person to be within their intellectual rights. No
arguments need to be available for that (cf. Plantinga 1991, p.303). Hence, Plantinga’s notion of proper
basicality is quite strong indeed.
[P2] There
are some people S*
in some circumstance C and at some time T who believe that Pt and S*’s
belief that Pt is justified, even if there exists no available propositional evidence in
support of the belief that Pt.
C.
Proper Basicality Criteria and Particularism
There
is a final point that relates to the approach taken by Plantinga to establish the proper
basicality of theistic belief. Plantinga adopts a non-classical form of foundationalism
that broadens the scope of properly basic beliefs and thereby allows Plantinga to place
various beliefs that Pt in the foundations of some people’s noetic structure. It
should be noted that, although modest foundationalism permits such a move, it doesn’t
necessitate it. As stated in the last
chapter, modest foundationalism might not accept the proper basicality of theistic belief.
Rejecting CF only suggests that there is no CF ground for denying the placement of
theistic beliefs in the foundations, but this is not equivalent to a reason for doing so. In short, even if the evidentialist objection
based on classical foundationalism is untenable, why suppose that theistic evidentialism
could not be based on modest foundationalism? Plantinga
himself (in 1983a) has suggested that one could modify CF, such that it did not have at
least some of the adverse philosophical consequences already noted. One of those
consequences was that most ordinary, everyday beliefs would not be rational if CF were
true. So we can widen the base of properly basic beliefs to include beliefs which entail
the existence of other minds and the external world.
In
short, we could include common sense beliefs by replacing
[CF] A
proposition p is properly basic for a person S if and only if p is either self- evident to
S or about S’s immediate experience or evident to the senses,
with
[X1] A
proposition p is properly basic for S if and only if p is self-evident or about S’s
immediate experience or evident to the senses for S, or is accepted as basic by nearly everyone.
If
we add to [X1] the premise
[X2] Beliefs
that Pt are not accepted by nearly everyone as basic,
we
get the same result, leaving theistic belief in need of propositional support or
grounding. Plantinga notes that [X1] would
still, at least as worded, leave most people unjustified in a host of beliefs. First, the
formulation seems to overlook the situational nature of rational belief. The belief that I
had breakfast this morning at Oriel College is hardly accepted as basic by just anyone. It
is my basic belief, but not others. Presumably we could chisholm [X1] more so as to allow for this. . . “is
the reliable output of belief-forming mechanisms recognized by nearly all” (memory,
perception, etc.). However, it seems that [X1]
or any such modification would be subject to the objection that not nearly everyone would
accept it as basic, and so we would still need an argument for the claim that these are
the criteria for proper basicality. The question then becomes one of establishing criteria
for the set of properly basic beliefs.
The
objection can be raised from another perspective. Suppose that alternate forms of modest
foundationalism are guilty of epistemic partiality in their selection of properly basic
beliefs, or that the form of foundationalism is for other reasons still unacceptable.
Might it not be that Plantinga’s version includes or allows too much in the way of properly basic beliefs? If
we so widen the set of properly basic beliefs to include theistic belief, what precludes
taking just any belief as properly basic? Suppose a person believes that the Great Pumpkin
returns each Halloween. What is to stop someone from claiming that this belief is rational
because it is properly basic? Plantinga (1983a, pp. 74-78) addresses this: “If we say
that belief in God is properly basic, will we not be committed to holding that just
anything, or nearly anything, can be taken as basic, thus throwing wide the gates to
irrationalism and superstition?” (p. 74). Plantinga
denies that the Reformed position has such a consequence. The proper basicality claim
stipulates that certain people will, at certain times and under certain
justification-conferring circumstances, have a rational belief in God without
propositional grounding. From this it does not follow that theistic belief (or any belief)
will be properly basic in just any circumstance
and at any time, that just any circumstance
confers justification on a belief. Nor is it that for any belief b, there is some circumstance C such that b is properly basic
in C. Plantinga likens this situation to a
denial of the verification principle in Ayer's Language,
Truth and Logic not committing one to holding that just any sentence (e.g., T' was
brillig; and the slithy toves did gyre and gymble in the wabe) is meaningful. Can one not
deny Ayer's verification principle of meaning without thereby suggesting that just
anything goes? If the criteria of modern foundationalism are rejected one is not thereby
committed to allowing just anything in the set of foundational beliefs. Or, to turn this
about a bit, is it necessary for the theist who advocates the proper basicality of
theistic belief to have a substitute criterion already in place, a criterion which allows
him to include theistic belief and exclude the Great Pumpkin? Plantinga wants to claim
that in order to make a judgment - positive or negative - about the proper basicality of
some belief, it is not necessary to have a criterion for proper basicality.
The question comes down to the procedure of rightly arriving at a
criterion of properly basic beliefs. Plantinga’s argument is that such a procedure
must, as Reid emphasized, be inductive. More precisely, he is thinking of the correct
criteria for proper basicality being necessary truths (like general ethical principles)
which are arrived at by Aristotelian intuitive induction, whereby what is a necessary truth is known by considering particular cases (actual or
possible). In other terms, the procedure must be particularist.[13] We
are to proceed inductively by assembling belief-condition pairs <B,C>, which range
over the follow sorts of relations: Given <B,C>,
B
is obviously properly basic in C,
It
is fairly clear that B is basic in C,
It
is not clear that B is basic in C,
===========================================
It
is not clear that B is not basic in C,
It
is fairly clear that B is not basic in C,
B
is obviously not properly basic in C.
The
next step is to form hypotheses containing the necessary and sufficient conditions for
proper basicality. The hypotheses must then be tested in the light of the examples
contained in the belief-condition pairs. So if it is obvious that under certain
conditions, the belief that <there is a person standing before me> is justified,
then a hypothesis whose conditions of proper basicality do not permit the belief to be
properly basic (such is the case with modern classical foundationalism) must be mistaken.
The degree to which it is clear that the belief
is or is not properly basic in the appropriate condition must obviously be weighed, but
the mere fact that a belief doesn't fit the criteria proposed by some hypothesis may count
against hypothesis (to a greater or lesser extent).
Plantinga
admits a number of important qualifications to this general outline. The sample set must
be revisable in the light of theory and argument. We may thereby come to see that some
particular belief-condition pair, originally taken to give us conditions in which a belief
is properly basic, does not in fact give us such conditions. Or perhaps the pair, hitherto
thought to give us necessary and sufficient conditions for the proper basicality of the
belief, gives only either sufficient or necessary conditions. So John’s seeming to
remember that p may be necessary for John’s belief that p being basic and justified,
but it may not be sufficient (if, for instance, John also knows that his memory is faulty
when it comes to matters related to p). Perhaps the best we will be able to do for many
belief-condition pairs is establish a sufficient condition for prima facie justification. Hence, being appeared
to in a particular way will be sufficient for being prima
facie justified in believing that there is a large puddle of water on the road, but it
is a justification which is defeasible and so can be overridden by sufficient reasons to
the contrary. A man who is appeared to water-on-the-roadly and believes that there is a
large puddle in the road may be prima facie
justified in his belief. But a man who is appeared to in this fashion and has good reason
for believing that (due to the hot weather conditions) the large puddle is really an
optical illusion will be an a different epistemic situation. Being appeared to in a
certain manner is, in some cases, not sufficient for an ultima facie justification. So Plantinga, in denying criteria for proper
basicality proposed by modern classical foundationalists (as well as non-classical modest
foundationalists) and in affirming that theistic belief is properly basic, need not hold
this on the basis of some precarious criterion under which “everything is
permitted.”
It
is here, though, that there is an important break between the position Plantinga
articulated in 1983a and his more recent epistemology. Plantinga has recently admitted
that the above inductive procedure will in fact yield a very broad range of
“justified” beliefs which may well include what many take to be bizarre and
absurd beliefs (e.g., “the Great Pumpkin comes and visits us each Halloween”).
As conceded in 1983a (p. 77-78), (i) different people or groups of people will draw
different conclusions about which beliefs are properly basic because they work from
different sets of examples and so (ii) the particularist route may not be very polemically
useful. Although each person or group of people will be responsible for their own set of
examples and what they take to be properly basic given these examples, there will still be a truth of the matter regarding what are in
fact and necessarily the correct criteria for proper basicality. But if
“justification” is a matter of “being within one’s intellectual
rights” in believing B, then what is ultimately relevant to one’s being
justified in believing B is the perspectival nature of the particularist method in its
employment. Given this, Plantinga now admits (1994b, chapter 4) that nearly anything can be justifiably believed, including
visitations from the Great Pumpkin on Halloween. What follows from this is the need to
radically re-assess the nature of the de jure
objection to theistic belief. According to classical evidentialism (with its deontological
roots) the rightness, propriety, or rationality of theistic belief is a matter of
epistemic dutifulness. But perhaps the irrationality of belief in God (without evidence)
is not a matter of violating intellectual duties. Perhaps it means something like theistic
belief is not a deliverance of rational
faculties. In that case the problem with theistic belief is that it is produced by
cognitive processes aimed at something other than truth or maybe even is the result of
some kind of cognitive malfunction. Plantinga’s more recent epistemological interest
lies in relocating the de jure question
regarding the rightness of theistic belief. It
is found elsewhere than the deontological concerns of the classical evidentialist
tradition.
II.
Warranted Theistic Belief
Plantinga’s
early religious epistemology is dominated by deontological and internalistic elements, but
it contains dimensions (e.g., epistemic excellence and non-defectiveness) which have since
been developed into a nondeontological, externalist epistemology.[14] Plantinga now
concedes that rationality is, as he says, “Janus-faced.” Although there are many
senses of rationality (including rationality as justification, deontologically construed),
Plantinga sees that it is actually the closely allied ideas of ratio (man as a rational animal), proper function
(freedom from cognitive malfunction), and warrant that supply us with the best way of
thinking about the nature of rationality. Warrant is that quantity or quality enough of
which is sufficient, or nearly so, to transform true belief into knowledge. Among other
things, what is necessary for warrant is the proper functioning of the ratio of the human animal.
A.
Rationality and Warrant
In
Warrant and Proper Function (1993b) and Warrant: the Current Debate (1993c), Plantinga
attempts to show that the received epistemological tradition in Western philosophy from
Descartes on is mistaken and incoherent. That tradition, as Plantinga explains it, has
taken “justification” as necessary and, together with true belief, nearly
(perhaps with an addendum to appease Gettier) sufficient for knowledge. However, it has
also taken justification as consisting of the fulfillment of epistemic duty. According to
Plantinga, though, (deontological) justification is neither necessary nor sufficient for
knowledge. What is essential to transforming true belief into knowledge (and what is
lacking in the traditional view) is the proper
functioning of a person’s cognitive faculties. Hence, knowledge does possess a
normative element, but it is not the normativity of deontological justification. “A
belief has warrant for you,” Plantinga says, “only if your cognitive apparatus
is functioning properly, working the way it ought to work, in producing and sustaining
it” (1993b, p. 4).
The
idea of “proper function” is one that nearly everyone has, employs, and grasps
in some minimal sense. A bird’s wing will not function properly if it is broken.
People under the influence of drugs or alcohol do not function properly; that is, their
mental and motor functions are to a lesser or greater degree affected in such a way that
they cannot carry out certain mental and physical tasks, or at least cannot do them well.
Plantinga finds the notion of proper function to be deeply embedded in science, where
there is talk about various bodily organs having functions, things which they are supposed
to do. Plantinga writes: “Biological and social scientists, furthermore -
psychologists. Medical researchers, neuroscientists, economists, sociologists, and many
others - continually give accounts of how human beings or other organisms or their parts
and organs function: how they work, what their purposes are, and how they react under
various circumstances” (p. 6). These functional generalizations seem to presuppose
the notion of proper function, organisms and organs functioning free from malfunction or
dysfunction. The notion of proper function then may be applied to one’s cognitive
life, specifically to those parts of one’s noetic equipment which are related to the
formation and sustenance of beliefs. So what transforms true belief into knowledge is
warrant, and one’s beliefs are warranted only if one’s epistemic equipment is
functioning as it ought in producing or sustaining the belief.
A
few qualifications are necessary. First, Plantinga emphasizes that proper function should be distinguished from normal function. A thing's functioning normally,
here, is a understood in a broadly, statistical sense. Carl Lewis’ ability to jump
further than the average person is not an indication that he is defective in some way.
Suppose that a nuclear disaster caused global blindness, leaving only a very small portion
of the human race with sight. Those who could see would not have improperly functioning
eyes on account of being outside the norm. Secondly, we need not suppose that for a
particular belief to have warrant all of one’s cognitive equipment must be in tip-top
shape. A person may suffer from cognitive defects in the faculty responsible for memory
beliefs, but this does not entail that her belief “I see a bus” will lack
warrant. What must be functioning properly is the faculty or subfaculty that is involved
in the production of a particular belief, and it need not be functioning properly over its
entire scope of operation. Lastly, proper function comes in degrees. So warrant may be conferred on a belief
even if the relevant cognitive machinery isn’t functioning perfectly. One need not
have 20/20 vision for sensory perceptual beliefs to have warrant.
But
there are other conditions required for warrant. Proper function alone will not do. It is
also necessary that one’s cognitive faculties are operational in the appropriate
environment. Faculties and environment must be in tune. Suppose a rational, mature adult
is transported to a planet revolving around Alpha Centauri, and on this planet conditions
are very different from earth. Let us suppose that there are elephants that are invisible
to human beings, and the elephants emit a radiation unknown to earthlings which causes
human beings to form the belief that a trumpet is sounding. An elephant walks by and the
human being forms the belief that a trumpet is sounding. Plantinga says that the problem
here is not that one's cognitive faculties are functioning improperly (for they clearly
are not) nor that the belief is false (that happens in fact to be the case), but the
problem is that the human being’s cognitive environment has been altered. He is no
longer in the environment for which his epistemic equipment was designed. So, adds
Plantinga, “your faculties must be in good working order, and the environment must be
appropriate for your particular repertoire of epistemic powers. It must be the sort of
environment for which your faculties are designed - by God or evolution (or both)”
(1993b, p. 7).
Three other conditions, though, are also necessary for a belief to have warrant. A person's noetic structure has, at any time, a range of beliefs that are held with differing degrees of strength. A belief that 2 + 2 = 4 or “I am in pain,” is typically held with a degree of strength greater than beliefs based on memories of what happened years ago in such and such a place. Our cognitive apparatus may indeed be functioning properly and in the appropriate environment; but nonetheless beliefs may possess different degrees of warrant by virtue of how firmly we believe a given proposition. Plantinga takes it that a proposition will have a degree of warrant proportional to the degree to which a person believes the proposition. When our cognitive equipment is in good working order, a belief will have warrant to the degree a person is inclined to accept it, and this degree will be the degree to which the person actually accepts the belief. Secondly, given that different parts of a person’s cognitive faculties are designed to serve a broad range of goals, warranted belief must be distinguished from the production of belief for reasons other than an epistemic goal. The human cognitive apparatus is designed, for instance, to form (under the appropriate circumstances) beliefs which will be conducive for survival, relieve us from suffering, incline us toward procreation, and so on. So Plantinga adds the alethic condition: “What confers warrant is one’s cognitive faculties working properly, or working according to the design plan insofar as that segment of the design plan is aimed at producing true beliefs” (p. 16). And finally, Plantinga finds it necessary to impose a reliability constraint for warrant (the important truth in reliabilism). In addition to a belief’s formation being connected with an alethic goal, it is crucial that, given the proper function of one's epistemic equipment in the appropriate environment, the statistical or objective probability of the belief’s being true be very high. “[I]f one of my beliefs has warrant,” writes Plantinga, “then the module of the design plan governing the production of that belief must be such that the statistical or objective probability of a belief's being true, given that it has been produced in accord with that module in a congenial cognitive environment, is high” (p. 18).[15]
B.
Theistic Knowledge
Plantinga’s
claim, then, is that theistic belief can be properly basic, and as such it is not only
justified but has warrant (at least for some people). The warrant claim is obviously a
stronger statement about the epistemic status of belief in God than the concession to
deontological rationality. One reason being that warrant (like Alston's concept of
epistemic justification) entails a reliability constraint. It puts one in a good position
vis-à-vis the epistemic goal, both the short term goal of acquiring a true belief and the
long term goal of maximizing truth and minimizing falsity in a body of beliefs. Indeed, on
Plantinga's own position a justified true belief does not constitute knowledge, but
warrant allows one to have knowledge that p. Plantinga’s position here was first
approximated in “On Reformed Epistemology” (1982a): “When our epistemic
powers are employed in the way God meant them to be, and when, furthermore, they work in
the way God intended them to work, the result is knowledge. . . .A belief constitutes
knowledge, if it is true and it arises as a result of the right use and proper function of
our epistemic capacities” (p. 17).
Plantinga’s
earlier discussion of axiological evidentialism can now be translated into warrant:
[P3] There
are some people S*
at certain times T, and under certain conditions C, such that at T and in C (a) S*
believe that Pt, (b) S*’s
belief that Pt satisfies warrant conditions, and (c) S*’s
belief that Pt is not based on reasons (adequate or otherwise).
[P3] entails the further epistemic claim that:
[P4] There
are some people S*
at certain times T and under certain conditions C, such that (a) S"
firmly belief that Pt, (b) S*
know that Pt, and (c) S*’s
belief that Pt is not based on reasons (adequate or otherwise).
Plantinga
surely wants to claim this, and does in 1982a, 1983a, and 1991, and it will form the
central thesis of Warranted Christian Belief
(forthcoming). Moreover, [P3] and [P4]
will equally hold where (c) is substituted by either (d) S has no reasons (adequate or
otherwise) which provide evidential support for the belief that Pt (evidence possession
requirement), and a fortiori (e) S is not able
to give any reasons (adequate or otherwise) for the belief that Pt (dialectical
evidentialism). So warranted properly basic theistic belief is, like justified properly
basic theistic belief, invariant under various evidential-requirement substitution
instances (and so the same will be true for knowing that Pt in a basic way).
Plantinga’s warrant theory reveals that for him the evidentialist position with
respect to belief in God is mistaken not merely in its deontological form, but even with
respect to theistic knowledge.
The
question of whether basic belief in God has warrant comes down to whether when a person
(at some time and under the appropriate circumstance(s)) believes in God in a basic way
any of the conditions of warrant are violated. In 1991 Plantinga reaffirms the widely
realized experiential conditions which he developed in earlier articles. But these
conditions are now construed as warrant
conferring circumstances. There are circumstances, involving neither testimony nor
argument, in which people find themselves with new or strengthened belief in God.
“Upon beholding the majesty of the mountains, or the glories of the starry heavens
above, or the power of the ocean, or the marvelous, highly articulate beauty of a tiny
flower, I may form the belief that it was good for God to have created all this”
(1991, p. 304). The circumstances would also include reading the Bible, listening to
Mozart, viewing a painting by Michael Angelo, and a host of other circumstances in which
people find themselves believing theistic propositions (specifically beliefs that Pt, as
defined earlier) in a basic way.
Plantinga
raises two questions crucial for the determination of whether there can be a warranted
basic belief in God.
(a) Do experiences
of these kinds [as noted above] sometimes contribute to someone's feeling impelled to
believe in God, so that she is more strongly inclined to believe than she would simply on
the basis of propositional evidence or testimony?
(b) If so, does this
ever happen in the case of those whose faculties are functioning properly?
One might be inclined to answer “yes” to the first and “no” to the second question. Plantinga points out that Karl Marx would hold that indeed people might find themselves very inclined to believe in God given such experiences, but that such a belief is perverted or unhealthy. A person who believes in God (in a basic way or not) suffers from some kind of cognitive malfunction and has a defective noetic structure. If a person’s cognitive apparatus is properly functioning, then they will not believe in God. Similarly, Sigmund Freud would answer “yes” to the first question. People certainly find themselves believing in God in such situations, but all such theistic beliefs arise as a result of “wish fulfillment,” and as such they are “illusions.” Theistic belief is the way many people are able to cope with the harsh realities of life, and as such it is something like beliefs formed for survival, to cope with fear, social stability, and so on. It is not “reality oriented.” Plantinga notes that it is not clear whether Freud would consider religious belief a cognitive malfunction. I am inclined to agree with Plantinga's suggestion here that Freud doesn’t view religious belief as the consequence of some cognitive malfunction, but as a belief formed on a module of the design plan not aimed at truth, and on that account lacks warrant.[16]
It
is at this point that Plantinga drops the philosophical bomb. The issue up for debate,
whether basic theistic belief can be warranted, cannot be settled within the field of epistemology. The answer to
such a question depends on what a person believes about the nature of human beings, and so
depends on issues anthropological, ontological, and yes - theological. Suppose we assume
that man was created in the image of God, and so created as to see God's hand in the
created order and through the sorts of experiences mentioned above. In this case, a person
will not hold a position like that of Marx or Freud. They will regard belief in God (or
the disposition to form belief in God) as part and parcel of a person's cognitive
equipment functioning properly and as produced by modules of the design plan aimed at
truth, not merely psychological comfort. Calvin, for instance, would view Marx and Freud
as the ones who have cognitive malfunction. For a theist, belief in God is entailed by
proper function; the failure to believe in God is an indication of a defective noetic
structure.
Plantinga
writes:
What you properly take to be rational. . .depends upon what sort of metaphysical
and religious stance you adopt; it depends upon what kind of beings you think humans are,
and what sorts of beliefs their noetic faculties will produce when they are functioning
properly. Your view as to what sort of creature a human being is will determine or at any
rate heavily influence your views as to what it is rational for human beings to believe.
And so the dispute as to whether theistic belief is rational can't be settled just by
attending to epistemological considerations; it is at bottom not merely an epistemological
dispute, but a metaphysical or theological dispute (1993d; cf. 1991, pp. 309-310; 1993b,
p. 183).
But
the matter is more specific. What sort of person one takes a human being to be will
determine what sorts of beliefs one takes as properly
basic. Plantinga states (1991, p. 310) that a nontheist will think of basic belief in
God as possessing little if any warrant. It will then be natural from a nontheistic
perspective to require reasons for theistic belief. Theistic belief will lack warrant
unless backed by evidence or arguments, and so the evidentialist requirement arises - at
least in this case - from a distinct perspective on human nature. Change this view of
human nature and the prospects for a warranted basic belief in God look rather different.
Plantinga’s religious epistemology leads ultimately to metaphysics and the de jure question about the rightness or rationality
of theistic belief cannot in the final analysis be settled without attending to the de facto question of the truth of theism.
III.
The Hard Proper Basicality Thesis
A. The
Impropriety of Nonbasic Theistic Belief
Although
it has been common to take either [P1] or [P2], and more recently [P3] and [P4],
as the sum of Plantinga’s religious epistemology, I think his religious epistemology
includes an additional thesis that is stronger than any of the these.
Stating
the position of John Calvin, Plantinga (1983a) writes:
The Christian does not need natural theology, either as a source of his confidence
or to justify his belief. Furthermore, the
Christian ought not to believe on the basis of
argument; if he does his faith is likely to be “unstable and wavering,” the
“subject of perpetual doubt.”. . .[Calvin] thinks that a Christian ought
not believe in God on the basis of other propositions; a proper and well-formed Christian
noetic structure will in fact have belief in God
among its foundations. (pp. 67, 73) [bold
mine; italics Plantinga’s]
Like Calvin, Kuyper, and Bavinck, Barth holds that belief in God is properly basic - that is, such that it is rational
to accept it without accepting it on the basis of any other propositions or beliefs at
all. In fact, they think the Christian ought not to
accept belief in God on the basis of argument; to do so is to run the risk of a faith
that is unstable and wavering, subject to all the wayward whim and fancy of the latest
academic fashion. . . .
. . .As these Reformed thinkers see things, one who takes belief in God as basic is
not thereby violating any epistemic duties or revealing a defect in his noetic structure;
quite the reverse. The correct or proper way to
believe in God, they thought, was not on the basis of arguments from natural theology or
anywhere else; the correct way is to take belief in God as basic. (p. 72) [emphasis
mine]
These
passages make it quite evident that Plantinga construes the Reformed objection to natural
theology to be twofold: (a) reasons and arguments are unnecessary for the believer to have a justified or
warranted belief in God and (b) reasons and arguments are inappropriate (in some sense) as a basis for
theistic belief. (a) is what I will call the soft thesis. It is entailed by the rejection of
the evidentialist requirement for theistic belief and has been the main focus of
discussion in the literature. (b) is a substantially stronger claim than (a), and it
isn’t immediately obvious how it is connected to (much less generated by) a denial of
the evidentialist requirement for theistic belief. (b) certainly entails a negation of the
evidentialist requirement, but it would seem also to entail a denial of the claim that
reasons are, in some instances, a sufficient basis for theistic belief, for on (b) nonbasic theistic belief is simply
inappropriate. (b) casts a broader
epistemological net. It expresses what I will be calling the hard proper
basicality thesis. But how exactly should we understand this hard thesis? What
meaning should be given to the “ought not
believe in God on the basis of reasons”? What is the nature of the incorrectness or
inappropriateness of nonbasic belief in God?
Plantinga correctly highlights Calvin’s emphasis on
“certainty” as an essential element of religious faith. As the following makes clear the kind of certainty
intended by Calvin is psychological.[17]
According to Plantinga, the reason why Calvin (and Reformed
theologians generally) holds that a Christian should not believe in God on the basis of
reasons or argument is because in a crucial way the nature and integrity of faith is
jeopardized. Reason-based faith is likely to be “unstable and wavering” and
“subject to perpetual doubt.” In Calvin this matter arises with reference to
belief that Scripture is the Word of God, but it is applicable to belief in God since
faith plays a role here as well. Faith in Scripture as God’s Word requires certainty,
but no argument or rational proof can establish with certainty that the Scriptures are the
very Word of God. “The certainty it deserves with us, it attains by the testimony of
the Holy Spirit” (Institutes, I.vii.5). And again Calvin writes: “Scripture will
ultimately suffice for a saving knowledge of God only when its certainty is founded upon
the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit. . .But those who wish to prove to unbelievers
that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be
known” (I.viii.13). Although this appears to be an outright epistemological statement by Calvin, it would be
a mistake I think to read it as such. Calvin’s use of the word “knowledge,”
though involving a cognitive or propositional component, is radically existential and
intimately associated with our being affected and moved to the worship of God.[18] This makes any
straightforward epistemological analysis rather difficult. It is important to bear in mind
that Calvin’s concern in contrasting belief based on rational evidences and the
certainty of faith is practical, moral, and religious, not essentially epistemic. This
would suggest that the kind of impropriety associated with nonbasic belief in God is not
primarily, if at all, epistemic. The putative negative consequences of reason- or
argument-based religious belief seems to fall on their relation to the character of a
religious or pious life. Calvin’s apparent anxiety about nonbasic religious belief is
the result of a religious (and probably pastoral) concern, not an epistemological one.
Suppose, though, that we focus on the nonepistemic reasons against
nonbasic theistic belief. It doesn’t strike me that nonbasic theistic belief is
incompatible with either certainty or something less than certainty but consistent with a
firm belief, nor that basic belief will always be certain or firm. This dichotomy between
basic belief/certainty (or firm belief) and nonbasic belief/uncertainty (or doubt) may
originate in the Humean “inferential drag” assumption: the more links in an
inferential chain the higher the degree of doubt we have.[19] I
don’t find this very convincing. First, many nonbasic beliefs are not arrived at
through an explicit process of inference, but merely take as their input other beliefs of
the subject. It is a common error to assume that “nonbasic” entails
“arrived at through a process of inference.” The psychology of nonbasic belief
is more complex and sophisticated than that. Moreover, even in cases of explicit inference
how firmly one holds a nonbasic belief will depend on the intuitive plausibility and force
of one’s standards of evidence, the kinds of argumental structures involved, and the
sorts of propositions involved. More
importantly, Calvin puts the goal of certainty in an infelicitous manner, as he allows a
significant degree of doubt in fact to coexist with faith (III.ii.17). Focusing on
firmness and high degree of belief seems to be more reasonable, but if that is the way we
cut the cake, the case against nonbasic theistic beliefs is reduced considerably. Thirdly,
there is no need to think that the vitality and spontaneity of basic belief does not also
characterize nonbasic belief. Even if psychological mediacy is involved in nonbasic
beliefs, this is compatible with a temporal immediacy in belief formation.
There are two other considerations though. Calvin emphasizes the
inner testimony of the Holy Spirit with respect to generating the certainty which faith
requires. Perhaps the Holy Spirit works through propositional evidence. Specifically,
suppose that part of the internal work of the Spirit involves enabling one to see the
force of certain kinds of propositional evidence and argument forms. This is a matter
worthy of detailed consideration which space constraints make impractical here.[20] I
raise it only to show that the case against nonbasic theistic belief on the grounds that
the source of a believer’s certainty regarding some religious beliefs is something
like the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit is not a very well formed argument. Secondly,
there is the widely accepted distinction, developed at length by L. Jonathan Cohen (1992)
between belief and acceptance - as two distinct cognitive states.
Belief is understood to be a disposition normally to feel that p (where this is an
involuntary cognitive response to the evidence one has and is aware of at any given time),
while acceptance is a policy for action adopted at will. It might then be argued that what
is required for the aims of a religious life is firm acceptance, and there may be a
disparity between the degree of belief and acceptance (indeed perhaps one without the
other altogether).
For
the reasons just canvassed, I simply do not see a plausible case for thinking that
nonbasic theistic belief necesarily has any adverse consequences for the goals of
religious life and practice. There does not appear to be a case against nonbasic theistic
belief based on nonepistemic considerations.
B. The
Epistemic Significance of the Basic/Nonbasic Distinction
Neither
Calvin, Kuyper, nor Bavinck specify anything in the way of what relevant epistemic
categories are involved in the distinction between basic and nonbasic belief in God. As
just explained, despite Calvin’s use of the word knowledge, it is difficult to
extrapolate from his account anything of obvious epistemic import. It is here that I think
Plantinga makes a contribution to the discussion, for Plantinga’s interest is epistemological.
Plantinga’s
earlier articles unpack the evidentialist challenge to theistic belief primarily in terms
of a deontological concept of rationality. There does seem to be a case for reading the
“ought not” clauses in the key passages (such as in 1983a) as indicating a
normativity of epistemic duty, obligation, and permission. [21]
However, I suggest that the more promising and philosophically
interesting interpretation of the hard proper basicality thesis derives from taking the
normativity implied by Plantinga’s “ought not” clauses as the normativity
of proper function. In fact, I think that both
the normativity of duty and the normativity of proper function are present in
Plantinga’s early articles. In 1983a (pp. 48, 52, 72) Plantinga mentions epistemic
defect, even though it is not developed in
any great detail.[22] In “On Reformed Epistemology” (1982a) knowledge is
explicitly associated with properly functioning cognitive faculties. More importantly, the
proper function reading fits Plantinga’s more recent warrant epistemology, and it is
warrant (not deontological justification) which transforms true belief into knowledge. The
proper function interpretation of the hard proper basicality thesis thereby allows a
treatment of the basicality/nonbasicality distinction in terms of theistic knowledge. On
this reading, nonbasic theistic belief represents cognitive malfunction or some kind of
epistemic defectiveness. Plantinga’s position here is that we have been designed to
form belief in God in a basic way in a variety of widely realized experiential
circumstances. So the view that the Christian ought
not believe in God on the basis of argument or other rational beliefs is taken as a
particular view about where theistic belief should
fit in a proper and well-formed noetic structure, where it should be according to a
theistic design plan and so where it should be when our cognitive system is functioning
properly, free from epistemic defect, malfunction, etc. It should be basic. Only then will
it possess warrant and constitute knowledge.
Dewey
Hoitenga, summarizing Plantinga's position, suggests the above interpretation:
Plantinga’s central position is that belief in God, that is, belief that God exists, does not require argument or evidence because it can be a properly basic belief. Indeed, for a fully rational human being, belief that God exists is in the foundations of the human noetic structure, just like beliefs that are self-evident to reason or evident to the senses, memory beliefs, and beliefs in other minds. (1991, p. 202) [23]
I
take the rationality here to be the rationality of proper function that is associated with
warrant and knowledge. So the hard thesis turns out to be something like:
[N1] Given
any person S, if S believes that Pt, then [if S’s cognitive system is functioning
properly with respect to the module(s) responsible for the formation of theistic
belief(s), then the belief that Pt is properly basic in S’s noetic structure N].
[N1] (by
the contraposition of the conditional in the consequent) entails:
[N2] Given any person S, if S believes that Pt, then [if the belief that Pt is nonbasic in N, then S’s cognitive system is not functioning properly with respect to the module(s) responsible for the formation of theistic belief(s)].[24]
If [N2] is true, then it seems that theistic belief based on reasons is going to be the result or manifestation of an epistemic defect of some sort. In which case theistic belief will have little (if anything) by way of warrant, for one of the conditions of warranted belief according to Plantinga is that one’s cognitive equipment be functioning the way it should, functioning according to its design plan. Calvin discusses the sensus divinitatis naturally implanted in humans whereby we have an instinctive awareness of God. Plantinga takes the sensus divinitatis to be a cognitive module that produces belief in God when triggered by widely realized experiential conditions. Belief in God should be as natural and spontaneous as belief in an external world, other minds, and what one ate for breakfast yesterday. Consequently, a noetic structure which lacks belief in God is epistemically defective, much like the noetic structure of a person who doesn't believe that there is an external world (and so does not believe what is obviously true) or who holds that his head is made of blown glass or cardboard (and so believes what is obviously false). For Calvin, when individuals do not believe in God this is an indication that their theistic belief forming mechanism(s) is damaged in some way, and so their cognitive system is - at least in this respect - defective. They fail to believe what is, or at any rate should be, obviously true. Atheism is clearly an indication of epistemic defect of a rather severe sort, as would be agnosticism.[25]
Plantinga’s
gloss on Calvin and the Reformed tradition seems to imply an additional claim. The design
plan stipulates that humans are not only to form belief in God, but also that the module
(or modules) responsible for the formation of theistic belief produce immediate or basic
theistic beliefs. Consequently, some forms of theistic belief are epistemically defective,
cases in which theistic belief is formed on the basis of reasons or arguments. In this
case, nonbasic theistic belief will be, like atheism and agnosticism, another type of
cognitive defect, even if not as severe.
Construed
this way, the hard proper basicality thesis requires a theological belief about how God
has intended us to acquire beliefs about Him.
[N2] is true only if this theological proposition is true, along with Plantinga’s
theory of warrant. I for one am dubious about the former; others will have their doubts
about the latter. The rather obvious response to the former is this. What grounds do we
have for believing that God has intended that humans only acquire theistic belief(s) in a
basic way? I am not aware of this claim having any Scriptural basis. And it is not in or
entailed by any of the statements found in the major creeds or confessions of Christendom
through the centuries, and nor for that matter do I find any unambiguous support for it in
the Reformed theological tradition. The only plausible case is one that could locate some
religious defect as an entailment of nonbasic theistic belief. We would then have to
assess this defect in the light of epistemic goals. In
other terms, there might be some conflict between epistemic goals permitting or requiring
nonbasic theistic belief and nonepistemic goals excluding nonbasic theistic belief. The
design plan would then have to be spelled out in such a way as to adjudicate this
conflict. As Plantinga notes (1993c, p. 16): “Not all aspects of the design of our
cognitive faculties need be aimed at the production of true beliefs; some might be such as
to conduce to survival, or relief from suffering, or the possibility of loyality, or
inclination to have more children, and so on.” It is likely that belief in God is
found on more segments of the design plan than simply the segment aimed at the production
of true beliefs. Here I am thinking of matters like the comfort and hope which belief in
God provides for human beings in the face of many adverse human experiences. It might
further be thought that these or other nonepistemic goals or functions for theistic belief
are better satisfied when belief in God is properly basic, but that they are compromised
or not achieved with nonbasic theistic belief. We have already seen a clear case of this
type of reasoning in Calvin’s insistance that the certainty of faith is not capable
of being generated by argument or premises from natural reason. Put less boldly, I think
that Calvin is interested in the vitality of faith and the psychological assurance found
in the Christian life whereby we have a firm confidence and trust in God and his promises.
So maybe nonbasic theistic belief, even if it fares well if we pay attention only to
epistemic goals, does not receive high marks relative to nonepistemic aims. The design
plan, having to take both these goals into consideration, specifies an immediate mode of
theistic belief formation. But as I argued earlier, I do not see any good argument that
nonbasic theistic belief is incompatible with the satisfaction of any relevant
nonepistemic goals. Therefore, I do not find [N1]
or [N2] very plausible. Moreover, as I will
henceforth argue, I do not think that Plantinga’s hard thesis should be construed in
terms of either [N1] or [N2].
C. The
Epistemic Superiority of Basic Belief in God
I
think that there is an alternative way of spelling out the sense in which a proper and
well-formed noetic structure will have theistic belief as a basic belief which does not
involve a straight out claim to cognitive malfunction for nonbasic theistic beliefs.
Although there are indications that Plantinga is claiming for the Reformed position (and
by suggestion his own) that nonbelief in God and nonbasic belief in God are both the
result of cognitive malfunction, I think that there is an interesting ambiguity in the
account that leaves room for an alternate construal.
On the one hand, there are numerous places where Plantinga speaks of basic belief
in God as the correct or proper way to believe
in God. Elsewhere, though, he makes another statement, a little less extravagant, when he
talks about an (instrumental) use of natural theology as “a means of moving toward
what Calvin sees as the best way to believe in God: as basic” (1983a, p. 73). Similarly, in an earlier article 1982a, Plantinga
says that according to the Reformed tradition “the most appropriate way to believe in
God is not to believe on the basis of evidence or argument from other propositions, but to
take this belief - that there is such a person as God - as basic” (p. 14). Notice
that in these two references, the proper basicality of belief in God is the
“best” and “most appropriate” way to believe in God. This is different from saying that taking belief
in God as basic is the correct and proper way to
believe in God, which suggests that to do otherwise is inappropriate. There is a sense in which the best or most
appropriate way to get to Boots in Oxford from Oriel College is to go down High Street and
take a right on Cornmarket. But there would be nothing wrong with taking Turl Street from
High Street, or dash through the Covered Market. The
fact that one way is the most appropriate (perhaps because it is the shortest route, or
the safest) does not make another way necessarily inappropriate.[26] Similarly, basic theistic belief may be the most appropriate
mode of theistic belief, but this doesn’t imply that nonbasic theistic belief is
inappropriate. And for this reason, even if atheism and agnosticism are the result of
cognitive malfunction, nonbasic theistic belief need not be thought of as epistemically
defective.
But why should basic belief in God be thought of as the most appropriate mode of believing in God? It could, of course, be most appropriate for nonepistemic reasons. We have already considered the prospects for that and found them to be implausible. Plantinga is thinking of basic belief in God as the most epistemically appropriate way of believing in God. And why is this so? Recall that Plantinga's warrant thesis maintains that the degree of warrant is proportional to the strength of belief: “the more firmly S believes B the more warrant B has for S” (1993b, p. 19). So a “weak” or “wavering” belief might possess a very low degree of warrant (or maybe even no warrant at all). It might even possess some degree of warrant, but not enough to transform true belief into knowledge. Above we noted that Plantinga sees the Reformed objection to natural theology to be based partly on the notion that nonbasic belief in God will be “unstable and wavering” and “the subject of perpetual doubt.” I have already argued that even if varying degrees of psychological doubt are compatible with nonbasic belief, the same is true for basic belief. In the following chapter I will present further argument for the kinds of circumstances in which basic belief can be weak or wavering. Any attempt to view basic belief as epistemically superior on the grounds that nonbasic belief is held with a less degree of firmness will have to be formulated in a rather careful manner. Moreover, on a Christian view it may be that the effects of sin on the human personality have consequences for how we spell out the design plan (a matter to be fully developed in chapter 5). For the moment, let’s think of the hard proper basicality thesis as articulating a position on a kind of epistemically superior noetic structure, or at least one that is - barring certain circumstances - typically epistemically superior to noetic structures in which theistic belief is nonbasic. This doesn’t require the obviously absurd claim, postulated earlier, that there is a wide gap between the degree of firmness with which we always hold basic and nonbasic theistic beliefs (or that basic beliefs are immune from doubt altogether). It is only requires that that typically basic theistic beliefs have a degree of firmness and perhaps psychological resilience which marks them off as standing in a better position to generate beliefs about God with a greater degree of warrant (than nonbasic theistic beliefs). If warrant is proportional to the degree of belief, and there is a significant (even if not radical) difference between basic and nonbasic beliefs at this juncture, then we have reason for saying why basic belief in God is typically epistemically superior to nonbasic theistic belief. A greater degree of warrant may often make a difference between knowledge and insufficiently warranted true belief.[27]
It
is plausible, then, to be taking Plantinga to mean something like:
[N3] Typically,
a noetic structure N1 in which theistic belief is properly basic is
epistemically superior to a noetic structure N2 in which theistic belief is
nonbasic, where epistemic superiority = the degree of warrant for (basic) theistic belief
in N1 is greater than the degree of warrant for (nonbasic) theistic belief in N2,
and the degree of warrant possessed by theistic belief in N1 is sufficient to
transform true belief into knowledge (but not so in N2).
On
[N3] it may be that the design plan stipulates
that we acquire theistic beliefs in either a basic or nonbasic way, but that basic beliefs
will typically have more by way of warrant since they are held with a greater degree of
firmness than nonbasic theistic beliefs. Clearly
[N3] is compatible with:
[N4]
There
are noetic structures N1 and N2 such that (1) theistic belief is
basic in N1 and nonbasic in N2 and (2) the cognitive system
represented by N1 and N2 is each functioning properly with respect
to the module(s) responsible for the formation of theistic belief in N1 and N2.
From which it follows that theistic beief in N1 and N2 is equally rational. S1 (who has a basic theistic belief) and S2 (who has a nonbasic theistic belief) are both functioning properly in their noetic establishment (at least so far as belief in God is concerned). The epistemic superiority of S1’s noetic structure is located in the actual degree of warrant possessed by S1’s theistic belief, specifically that the degree of warrant possessed by his belief in God is sufficient to transform true belief into knowledge. Not so for S2 (at least not typically). I shall have cause for further chisholming of [N3], so it should only be regarded as a first approximation to an accurate and adequate exposition of Plantinga’s hard thesis. Nevetheless, I think at this point we have a suitable and adequate enough account of Plantinga's religious epistemology to begin to look at the ways in which reasons (such as those found in natural theology) might be factored into Plantinga’s epistemological equation. A better understanding of Plantinga’s epistemology will unfold in the context of this investigation.