[Vision2020] Eugenie Scott's Talk at the U of I

[Michael]

Joe (if you insist!),

 

Thanks again for the careful response and helpful considerations.  I'll try
to interact with the full post, but I'll just use your initial outline as my
take-off to keep things orderly.  And I'll make sure we keep on the topic of
Eugenie Scott : -)

 

I.

You Wrote: 1/ My main criticisms against Plantinga are aimed at his
externalist

theory of warrant (or justification), not his religious epistemology.

 

Me: Yes, I think the distinction between internalism and externalism is
fundamental. Thanks for pointing this out.  However, I do think Plantinga's
externalist account is somewhat immune to some of BonJour's earlier
objections in 1985. From what I can tell from the more recent discussions,
BonJour's insistence on internal reasons just becomes the fundamental
presupposition of the internalist; the externalist just starts with the
opposite intuition. It seems to boil down to whether or not one is going to
insist on subjective justification-to have sufficient reason-or whether one
is content to believe that 'knowledge' of the nicely robust kind can be
'given' by that which is possibly outside his immediate cognitive awareness
(at least in principle).  Do I really need direct access in this way?  Do I
have to 'own' knowledge in this way?  The internalist says, yes indeed, and
the externalist says, "why believe a thing like that?"  Then, as I see it,
the internalist proceeds to give reasons that all assume the original
intuition (as I believe is true of Tim McGrew's challenge to Plantinga). The
externalist in turn shrugs his shoulders and says, 'don't think so.'  

 

In fact, I think this basic commitment of the internalist is evidenced by
some of BonJour's more recent stuff. BonJour is willing to split apart the
question of 'knowledge' and his internalist demand for justification
altogether. He writes:  "I say 'justification' rather than 'knowledge,'
because I want to side-step issues about whether justification is a
requirement for knowledge and about the, to my mind, rather vexed concept of
knowledge itself."[i]   But even 'justification' is abandoned once Plantinga
keeps questioning: BonJour later says, "indeed, I would be on the whole
quite happy to abandon the term 'justification' to externalists and their
ilk, and to simply couch the issues with which I am concerned in terms of
such reasons [having good reasons for the truth of an empirical belief]."
(Resurrecting Old-Fashioned Foundationalism, ed. Michael DePaul (Rowman &
Littlefield, 2001): 21.)  This 'criticial epistemology' of BonJour's is not
even concerned with the conceptual analysis of knowledge or figuring out
when it is we "know" something and when we don't.  The externalism of the
Platingian kind is content to "know" that something is the case without
feeling the cognitive responsibility to somehow 'know that he knows,' etc.  

 

And I'm not sure how BonJour's counter example of clairvoyance refutes
Plantinga's externalism.  As you note, the person has "plenty of reasons" to
not believe what clairvoyance has brought, which is why you think this
person does in fact not know what clairvoyance has brought even though the
belief in question is true and even though the clairvoyance cognitive module
is functioning properly.  However, 'having plenty of reasons' to reject the
belief in question is part of the overall functioning of this person's
cognitive faculties; 'having reasons' is just part of the overall design
plan.  If there is no malfunction, then Plantinga's externalism concludes
that this person's belief is not knowledge in the same way that an
internalist account would. 

 

II.

You Wrote: 2/ One cannot use Plantinga's epistemology to argue for the
existence of

God, as you suggest, for God's existence is built into the very foundation

of his theory.

 

Me: Well, Plantinga at least gave it his best shot.  He writes: "Suppose.you
are convinced (as most of us are) that there really is such a thing as
warrant and really are (for natural organisms) such things as proper
function , damage, design, dysfunction, and all the rest.  You think there
really are these things and are unwilling merely to take the functionalist
stance: then if you also think there is no naturalistic analysis of these
notions [what he argues for], what you have is a powerful argument against
naturalism.  Given the plausible alternatives, what you have, more
specifically, is a powerful theistic argument; indeed, what you have is a
version of Thomas Aquinas's Fifth Way." (Warrant, 1993, 214)   And although
'design plan' is built into the foundation of his theory, a theistic account
of it is not, as you point out by referencing attempted naturalistic
accounts.

 

III.

You Wrote: 3/ For this and other reasons, Plantinga's theory is far from
religiously

neutral. Nor is it unconcerned with providing an adequate response to the

skeptic, as you suggest.

 

Me: Well, I still think Plantinga's theory is at the methodological start
religiously neutral; he speaks of 'functioning' and 'design' at the front in
with evolutionary, naturalistic language to help make this more clear I
think.  And as I already pointed out, I don't think theism is built into the
foundation of his theory.  As for Plantiga's concern with answering the
skeptic, you might be right; this, as you say,  might be "lurking in the
background as a large motivating factor of his theory."  But I would still
think it significant that Plantinga does not explicitly make his project
such an answer.  I think trying to figure out how and how not Plantinga is
answering the skeptic should prove valuable.  And if not valuable, at least
fun. 

 

MISC:

 

You wrote:

basic beliefs that can equally account

for or are equally critical of the diversity of opinions that are in fact

present amongst the peoples of the world. There is something inherently

dogmatic about an epistemology that allows for knowledge of a monotheistic

Christian God yet rules out the possibility of knowing that either

polytheism or atheism is true.

 

Me:

Well, I'm not sure why a theistic point of view cannot equally account for
and be equally critical of the diversity of opinions that are in fact
present amongst the peoples of the world. It might be good if you fleshed
this claim out a bit. Perhaps I'm not fully understanding the claim.  And
I'm also still not sure how Plantinga's externalism inherently rules out the
possibility of atheism.  But this seems to be addressed by the previous
discussion.

 

As a final note, I should say by now that I think there is something
troubling about limiting an analysis of 'knowledge' to merely propositional
knowledge to begin with.  For conceptual cleanness, it might be helpful to
delineate knowing that p, knowing a person, knowing a language, and knowing
how, but I'm not convinced there is necessarily a 'concept' we can get at
through analysis that references "knowing that p" without considering the
meaning of 'knowledge' in its various senses.  But then again, perhaps the
exclusion of these other kinds of knowledge is just further evidence that
the classical approach to epistemic justification is more concerned with
BonJour's 'critical epistemology' and his internalist assumption than it is
an attempted grasp of the meaning of the word 'knowledge.'  But then on the
other hand, it would get closer to convincing someone like me if we started
wondering if there was a certain kind of 'know' that meant 'know that you
know,' the kind that just might reference something like an internalist
constraint and something potentially excluding the eyes of 'faith.'

 

Thank you very much for sticking on a topic I know something about! I enjoy
the dialog.  

 

Michael Metzler

 


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