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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Joe (if you insist!),<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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 : -)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>You Wrote: 1/ My main criticisms against Plantinga are aimed at his
externalist<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>theory of warrant (or justification), not his religious epistemology.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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.’ <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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.”<a
style='mso-endnote-id:edn1' href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span
class=MsoEndnoteReference><sup><span class=MsoEndnoteReference><sup><font
size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>[i]</span></font></sup></span></sup></span></a>
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].”<i><span
style='font-style:italic'> (Resurrecting Old-Fashioned Foundationalism</span></i>,
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. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>II.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>You Wrote: 2/ One cannot use Plantinga’s epistemology to argue
for the existence of<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>God, as you suggest, for God’s existence is built into the very
foundation<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>of his theory.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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 <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Fifth
Way</st1:address></st1:Street>.” (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.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>III.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>You Wrote: 3/ For this and other reasons, Plantinga’s theory is
far from religiously<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>neutral. Nor is it unconcerned with providing an adequate response to
the<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>skeptic, as you suggest.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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. <span style='background:
yellow'><o:p></o:p></span></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>MISC:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>You wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>basic beliefs that can equally account<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>for or are equally critical of the diversity of opinions that are in
fact<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>present amongst the peoples of the world. There is something inherently<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>dogmatic about an epistemology that allows for knowledge of a
monotheistic<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Christian God yet rules out the possibility of knowing that either<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>polytheism or atheism is true.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Me:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>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.’<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Thank you very much for sticking on a topic I know something about! I
enjoy the dialog. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Michael Metzler<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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name="_edn1" title=""></a><font size=2 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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