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  • Proper Functionalism and the MetalevelA Friendly Reply to Timothy and Lydia McGrew
  • Tyler Dalton McNabb

Over the years, Alvin Plantinga has developed an epistemological system that allows beliefs to be warranted1 without requiring the subject to have internal access to those properties conferring warrant. Plantinga's epistemology, known as proper functionalism, allows a subject's belief to be warranted, insofar as the right conditions relating to cognitive proper function are in place.2 Plantinga's theory of warrant can be summarized as follows:

S's belief that P is warranted iff,

  1. 1). S's cognitive faculties are functioning properly,

  2. 2). S's cognitive environment is sufficiently similar to the one for which the cognitive faculties are designed for,

  3. 3). The design plan that governs the production of such belief is aimed at producing true belief, and

  4. 4). The design plan is a good one in that there is a high statistical (or objective) probability that a belief produced under these conditions will be true.3 [End Page 155]

In Warrant and Proper Function,4 Plantinga utilizes his theory of warrant to show how belief in other minds, belief that the future will be like the past, memorial beliefs, perceptual beliefs, and testimonial beliefs can all be warranted, even apart from argumentation. In an even more controversial move, Plantinga, in Warranted Christian Belief,5 applies his theory to religious belief. Plantinga argues for what he calls "Reformed epistemology." Roughly, Reformed epistemology is the thesis that religious belief can be justified or warranted apart from argumentation. Plantinga argues that it is epistemically possible (that is to say, given what we know it could be the case) that we have what John Calvin called the Sensus Divinitatis (SD)—a faculty aimed toward producing belief about God and His activities. If the SD in a subject S meets the aforementioned proper functionalist constraints when the SD produces belief that God exists, then belief that God exists is warranted, even apart from S possessing an argument for her belief.

Plantinga doesn't actually claim that we possess such a faculty. He merely argues that it could be the case that we have such a faculty, and, if we did have such a faculty, religious belief would be rational apart from argument. In a sense, Plantinga's epistemology can be seen as a possible defense of the rationality of religious belief. Plantinga, however, not only utilizes his theory of warrant for the purposes of developing a defense; he also utilizes his theory of warrant to discredit other worldviews. For example, Plantinga has argued that naturalism can't supply the preconditions needed to make proper function intelligible.6 Moreover, Plantinga has also argued that on naturalism, we have a defeater for thinking that our faculties are successfully aimed at truth. He develops what he calls the evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN).7 The idea is that, if both naturalism and evolutionary theory were true, then human cognitive faculties would not be directly aimed toward producing true beliefs but rather would be aimed toward producing beliefs that aid in the Darwinian requirement of survival and reproduction. Plantinga is skeptical that faculties that have come about through random genetic [End Page 156] mutation would be even indirectly aimed at producing true beliefs.8 Proper functionalism, then, plays a fundamental role both in Plantinga's assessment that belief in God can be properly basic and in his development of defeaters for belief in naturalism.

There have been, however, numerous objections to both Plantinga's proper functionalist theory of warrant9 and his applications of it.10 For the purposes of this essay, I will focus on proper functionalism simpliciter and not on how he applies his theory. Specifically, I will entertain Timothy and Lydia McGrew's metalevel objection to Plantinga's proper functionalism. The objection centers on the proper functionalist's need to borrow from internalist conceptions of rationality in order to consistently formulate defeaters. After articulating their objection, I provide two reasons to think that the objection fails. My ultimate aim is that the robust and plausible nature of Plantinga's system will be seen and that the larger project of Reformed epistemology will be advanced.

Warrant...

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