{"agent_id":"plantinga","agent_name":"Alvin Plantinga","slug":"belief-in-god-as-properly-basic","label":"Belief in God as properly basic: must theistic belief be grounded in evidence to be rational, or can it be a properly basic belief produced by a properly functioning sensus divinitatis?","topic":"Belief in God as properly basic","question":"Must theistic belief be grounded in evidence to be rational, or can it be a properly basic belief produced by a properly functioning sensus divinitatis?","position":"Belief in God can be *properly basic* — formed non-inferentially in a properly functioning cognitive agent in the appropriate circumstances — and a properly basic belief in God can have full *warrant*, the special property that turns true belief into knowledge. The faculty producing it is the *sensus divinitatis*, the Calvinian cognitive capacity that responds to the majesty of nature, the encounter with moral law, the sense of guilt and gratitude, and the experience of the divine in ordinary life. Classical foundationalism — the view that properly basic beliefs must be either self- evident or incorrigible to the subject — fails by its own standard, since the criterion itself is neither self-evident nor incorrigible on its own view. With the classical-foundationalist constraint set aside, the question of which beliefs can be properly basic must be answered from somewhere else; the answer comes from an account of proper function and design plan.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Belief in God can be *properly basic* — formed non-inferentially in a properly functioning cognitive agent in the appropriate circumstances — and a properly basic belief in God can have full *warrant*, the special property that turns true belief into knowledge.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"The faculty producing it is the *sensus divinitatis*, the Calvinian cognitive capacity that responds to the majesty of nature, the encounter with moral law, the sense of guilt and gratitude, and the experience of the divine in ordinary life.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Classical foundationalism — the view that properly basic beliefs must be either self- evident or incorrigible to the subject — fails by its own standard, since the criterion itself is neither self-evident nor incorrigible on its own view.","n":[]},{"t":"With the classical-foundationalist constraint set aside, the question of which beliefs can be properly basic must be answered from somewhere else; the answer comes from an account of proper function and design plan.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"*God and Other Minds* (1967) — the early argument that belief in God is no worse off epistemically than belief in other minds; 'Reason and Belief in God' (1983, in *Faith and Rationality*, ed. Plantinga and Wolterstorff) — the founding Reformed-epistemology essay against classical foundationalism; *Warrant: The Current Debate* (1993); *Warrant and Proper Function* (1993) — the proper-functionalist account of warrant; *Warranted Christian Belief* (2000) Chapters 1–4 on the *de jure*/*de facto* distinction and the A/C model; 'Advice to Christian Philosophers' (1984, *Faith and Philosophy* 1.3). Reception: Nicholas Wolterstorff's co-edited *Faith and Rationality* and 'Can Belief in God Be Rational If It Has No Foundations?'; William Alston's *Perceiving God* (1991) as the cousin religious-experience epistemology; Gary Gutting's *Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism* (1982) — the standing critique on which classical evidentialism's burden- of-proof requirement is pressed; Linda Zagzebski (ed.), *Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology* (1993) — the Catholic-natural- theology counter-volume.","works":["*God and Other Minds* (1967) — the early argument that belief in God is no worse off epistemically than belief in other minds","'Reason and Belief in God' (1983, in *Faith and Rationality*, ed. Plantinga and Wolterstorff) — the founding Reformed-epistemology essay against classical foundationalism","*Warrant: The Current Debate* (1993)","*Warrant and Proper Function* (1993) — the proper-functionalist account of warrant","*Warranted Christian Belief* (2000) Chapters 1–4 on the *de jure*/*de facto* distinction and the A/C model","'Advice to Christian Philosophers' (1984, *Faith and Philosophy* 1.3)"],"reception":"Nicholas Wolterstorff's co-edited *Faith and Rationality* and 'Can Belief in God Be Rational If It Has No Foundations?'; William Alston's *Perceiving God* (1991) as the cousin religious-experience epistemology; Gary Gutting's *Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism* (1982) — the standing critique on which classical evidentialism's burden- of-proof requirement is pressed; Linda Zagzebski (ed.), *Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology* (1993) — the Catholic-natural- theology counter-volume.","status":"The position has been the standing target of secular analytic epistemology since the 1983 *Faith and Rationality* essay. The standard charges are three: that it is fideism in technical dress; that it licenses any belief held immediately (the Great Pumpkin objection); and that it substitutes a controversial theological premise (the *sensus divinitatis*) for the evidence it refuses to require. The Great Pumpkin objection collapses once proper basicality is seen to require proper function, not arbitrary will; the controversial- theological-premise charge mistakes a conditional structure for an assertion. The position has held its ground; classical foundationalism is now widely conceded dead in mainstream analytic epistemology, and the Plantingan proper-functionalist alternative is one of several externalist proposals (reliabilism, virtue epistemology) competing for the space that collapse left behind.","era":"1932-present","discipline":"Philosophy, Theology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Warranted Christian Belief","page":"p. 201","canonical":"","quote":"According to the A/C model 1 am presenting here, theistic belief produced by the sensus divinitatis can also be properly basic with respect to warrant.'5 It isn't just that the believer in God is within her epistemic rights in accepting theistic belief in the basic way. That is indeed so; more than that, however, this belief can have warrant for the person in question, warrant that is often sufficient for knowledge.","label":"Warranted Christian Belief, p. 201"},{"n":2,"work":"Warrant and Proper Function","page":"pp. 183–184","canonical":"","quote":"There are others that I have not mentioned: moral beliefs, for example, such as the belief that it is wrong to cause someone great suffering just because that affords you a certain mild pleasure. And in *Warranted Chris-* *tian Belief,* the sequel to this work, I shall argue that, from a theistic perspective, it is plausible to follow John Calvin in thinking belief in God can also be properly basic.","label":"Warrant and Proper Function, pp. 183–184"},{"n":3,"work":"Knowledge and Christian Belief","page":"pp. 50–51","canonical":"","quote":"The same goes for memory. You ask me what I had for breakfast; I think for a moment and then remember: pancakes with blueberries. I don't argue from the fact that it seems to me that I remember having pancakes for breakfast to the conclusion that in fact I did; rather, you ask me what I had for breakfast and the answer simply comes to mind.","label":"Knowledge and Christian Belief, pp. 50–51"},{"n":4,"work":"Warranted Christian Belief","page":"p. 200","canonical":"","quote":"You think about the matter carefully and at length, considering the F&M complaint and all the rest, but it still seems clear or obvious (perhaps even overwhelmingly so) that there is such a person as God: how could someone sensibly claim that you were being irresponsible or derelict with respect to some epistemic duty? That would be a hard saying indeed.","label":"Warranted Christian Belief, p. 200"},{"n":5,"work":"Warrant and Proper Function","page":"pp. 182–183","canonical":"","quote":"That is fair enough; but the announcers often conclude that the demise of classical foundationalism means that we must reject all of epistemology, or even the very notion of truth itself.","label":"Warrant and Proper Function, pp. 182–183"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"warranted-christian-belief-and-the-aquinas-calvin-model","label":"Warranted Christian Belief and the Aquinas/Calvin model: can specifically Christian belief — the trinity, incarnation, atonement, resurrection — be warranted in the same way generic theistic belief is, or does the move from theism to Christianity require a different kind of justification?"},{"slug":"the-free-will-defense-and-the-problem-of-evil","label":"The Free Will Defense and the problem of evil: is God's existence logically compatible with the evil there is, and does the evidential weight of horrendous suffering yield a probabilistic argument against theism?"},{"slug":"modal-metaphysics-transworld-identity-and-the-modal-ontologi","label":"Modal metaphysics, transworld identity, and the modal ontological argument: are possible worlds abstract states of affairs that the actual world instantiates, do individuals retain numerical identity across them, and does the modal ontological argument show theistic belief rational?"},{"slug":"the-evolutionary-argument-against-naturalism","label":"The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism: is the conjunction of metaphysical naturalism and contemporary evolutionary theory self-defeating, and does the inscrutability of P(R | N&E) yield a defeater for every belief the naturalist holds, including N&E itself?"},{"slug":"religious-exclusivism-in-the-face-of-religious-diversity","label":"Religious exclusivism in the face of religious diversity: can exclusivist Christian belief remain warranted when the believer is sincerely aware of equally devout adherents of other religions, or does pluralism defeat exclusivist warrant?"}]}