Notes for 10/30/2025

 

10/30/2025

[Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")]

[Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.]

Can you be happy and not know it?

 

Evidentialist challenge to (some) religious claims:

Many religious claims are under-evidenced (the overall weight of evidence is either against or neutral regarding them).

This suggests that the proper epistemic attitude should be at least suspension of judgment (if not rejection) regarding them (non-belief).

 

(“Presumption of atheism” – non-belief should be the default position. The “burden of proof” for any non-trivial religious claim lies with the person advocating its acceptance.)

 

“Epistemic obligation” can be understood in the two ways I distinguished strong and weak Evidentialism (see last class notes):

Strong EO: Non-rational belief is culpable (condemnatory) (ethical culpability is most common, but not necessarily the only type of culpability)

Weak EO: Non-rational belief can be excusable but is acknowledged as inferior to rational belief (similar to the way unhealthy eating is viewed) (mildly condemnatory).

 

It is common for many believers to accept that their beliefs are not rational, and to appeal to faith as a defensible secondary justification (rational belief would be preferable if available).

 

Other believers accept Evidentialism and think the burden of proof can be adequately met (most apologetics).

 

Do you hold any beliefs you think are under-evidenced?

Do you accept a strong or weak view of epistemic obligation?

[discuss]

 

 

 

Plantinga rejects Evidentialism.

 

He thinks Evidentialism entails classical foundationalism.

 

Foundationalism: A belief B is rational if and only if either i) B is overall supported by evidence E, or ii) B is a basic belief.

 

Evidentialists who reject foundationalism must accept either an infinite regress of evidential justifications or a closed network of justifications (coherentism). But Plantinga thinks neither of these is satisfactory.

 

 

If a belief is not derived from another belief it is basic.

 

But some basic beliefs are proper (rationally acceptable) while others, presumably, are not.

 

For example, my belief that I am not hungry at the moment seems proper, while a belief that Bigfoot is currently in my basement is not.

 

The question is how we should decide which beliefs are or are not properly basic.

 

Plantinga represents the classical foundationalist view as being something like:

 

(PB) For any proposition A and person S, A is properly basic for S if and only if A is incorrigible for S, self-evident to S, or evident to the senses, for S.

A belief is incorrigible when holding it makes it self-guaranteeing.

-      I am thinking.

-      I am in a good mood.

-      I think I see a tree.

 

A belief is self-evident when understanding it is sufficient for belief.

-      No positive integer is its own successor.

-      Triangles have 3 sides.

-      No proposition can be both true and false at the same time.

 

Evident to the senses:

-      This is a table.

-      Here is a hand.

-      I am touching my nose.

 

Plantinga suggests that PB is not itself properly basic.

 

But nor does PB follow deductively from any set of propositions that are PB.

 

(My interpretation of Plantinga:)

What justifies PB for the classical foundationalist is that it appears to give the “right answers” from the standpoint of our intuitions when we apply it to examples.

 

(This is the way we craft principles and analyses in philosophy: We formulate, test against examples, and refine accordingly.)

 

Consider:

“Other minds exist.”

“The world is not illusory.”

 

Plantinga thinks most people think these are properly basic even though they fail PB.

 

So, Plantinga proposes a different (reformed) account of proper basicality:

     (PBR) In condition C, S is justified in taking P as properly basic.

 

Plantinga’s view is that condition C includes both S’s intuitions and certain relevant putatively objective facts.

 

People can differ in their intuitions – in what seem to be the “right answers.”

 

But intuitions can be wrong.

Example:

Sally believes that the children talking to her are “communist dwarf spies.”

 

If her conditions are having schizophrenia or having taken hallucinogens, then these are the “wrong” kind of conditions.

 

Still, people might differ in what should count as a properly basic belief (given their “circumstances”).

 

Suppose Plantinga and Rowe are stargazing. Plantinga says, “God has made all this.” Rowe says, “I’m unconvinced.”

 

Is either Plantinga or Rowe irrational?

 

Plantinga thinks, “God has made all this” can be properly basic for him (even though it is not so for Rowe).

 

The biggest problem with Plantinga’s view is that it seems to many that it lets in far too much.

 

Objection: Doesn’t Plantinga’s view imply that belief in the Great Pumpkin is properly basic?

 

Plantinga: No. Because there is no Great Pumpkin. Also, among the objective conditions that exist is that God has implanted an innate disposition in humans to believe in him, but there is no innate disposition to believe in the Great Pumpkin.

 

How about these:

(1) I am being watched.

(2) David Letterman is in love with me.

(3) All the people on this bus want to kill me.

(4) Life is meaningless.

(5) I used to think some religious beliefs were properly basic for me, but now I think I was deluding myself.

 

One evidentialist reply to Plantinga is to reject his claim that paradigmatic basic beliefs are unevidenced (in fact, in places he appears to concede as much).

 

Evidence: information that can be used to amplify the likelihood of a claim. (Pr(C)/E > Pr(C))

 

So, for example, my belief that God is speaking to me when reading the Bible is evidentially supported by feelings of significance that I don’t have when reading other texts, and I would not believe God is speaking to me in the absence of such feelings.