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Foundationalism and the Justification of Religious Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Julie Gowen
Julie Gowen
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, Illinois State University
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Extract

Alvin Plantinga, in some essays recently published and presented, defends the rationality of a belief in the existence of God on the grounds that it is foundationally justified. Though this belief does not appear to be justified were we to adopt what Plantinga calls classical foundationalism, there are other, less restrictive (and presumably at least equally plausible) versions of foundationalism. Plantinga urges that we recognize that a belief in the existence of God can be warranted within one of these frameworks.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 393 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

page 393 note 1 Plantinga, A., ‘Is Belief in God Rational?’, in Rationality and Religious Belief (Notre Dame University Press, 1979).Google Scholar ‘Is Belief in God Properly Basic?’, Nous, xv, I (March, 1981). Lectures given at the Wheaton Philosophy Conference, Wheaton College, November 1980.

page 393 note 2 Cf. Alston, W., ‘Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?’, Philosophical Studies, XXIX (1976), 287–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Or, ‘Two Types of Foundationalism’, Journal of Philosophy, LXXIII, 7 (8 04, 1976), 165–85.Google Scholar

page 394 note 1 A ‘noetic structure’ Plantinga defines (in ‘Is Belief in God Rational?) as ‘the assemblage of beliefs a person holds together with the various logical and epistemological relations that hold among them’ (p. 12).

page 394 note 2 Wheaton Lectures, section in, pp. 13 14.

page 395 note 1 For a more detailed discussion of this distinction see Alston, ‘Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?’, esp. pp. 290–1.Google Scholar

page 395 note 2 I am indebted to Jay Harker for pointing out the importance of this distinction between strong and weak immediate justification.

page 396 note 1 Cf. Alston, W., ‘Self-Warrant: a Neglected Form of Privileged Access’, American Philosophical Quarterly, XIII, 4 (10, 1976), pp. 257–72.Google Scholar

page 397 note 1 Cf. Alston, , op. cit. p. 265.Google Scholar

page 397 note 2 Goodman, Alvin, ‘What is Justified Belief?’, justification and Knowledge, edited by Pappas, George (Reidel, 1980).Google Scholar

page 397 note 3 If a belief B is mediately justified then B receives all of its warrant from relationships it bears to other justified beliefs.

page 397 note 4 By ‘process’ Goldman means a functional operation or procedure, i.e. something that generates a mapping from certain states – inputs – into other states – outputs.

page 398 note 1 Quite possibly memories can be the input of a belief-forming process that results in immediately justified (strong sense) beliefs. And memories may combine with perceptions for the same result. For our purposes, however, I'll limit discussion to a perceptual belief-forming process.

page 398 note 2 A numinous religious experience is an encounter experience in which one senses the immediate presence of God, or at least the experience is interpreted as being an experience in which one has sensed the immediate presence of God. Saul's experience on the road to Damascus is an example. A mystical experience, by contrast, is an introvertive and non-encounter experience; the divine is found within. (For a more developed rendering of this distinction cf. Smart, Ninian, Reasons and Faiths (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958)Google Scholar, or Rowe, William, Philosophy of Religion (Encino: Dickenson Publishing Co., 1978 (Chapter 6).)Google Scholar

page 398 note 3 Op. cit.

page 399 note 1 Rowe, , op. cit. p. 75Google Scholar criticizes Russell's argument.

page 399 note 2 Alston, , op. cit. p. 266Google Scholar raises a serious objection to the thesis that we can be directly aware of facts.

page 399 note 3 Mavrodes, George, Belief in God: A Study in the Epistemology of Religion (New York: Random House; 1970).Google Scholar

page 399 note 4 Moore, G. E., Some Main Problems of Philosophy (New York: Collier Books, 1962).Google Scholar

page 400 note 1 Even if S's belief that he hears the voice of God were immediately justified by his sense-data experience, it does not follow that a belief in God's existence is immediately justified. This latter belief would be justified on the basis of the first-mentioned belief via entailment. Thus in this case belief in God's existence receives some of its warrant from other allegedly justified beliefs, which is to say that this belief is not immediately justified in the strong sense of that term in circumstances such as these.

page 401 note 1 I am interpreting what Mavrodes has to say within a foundationalist framework. He does not claim, in Belief in God, to be a foundationalist.

page 403 note 1 Nicholas Wolterstorff raises a related concern about foundationalism in general. In Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976)Google Scholar he queries: ‘Essential to the foundationalist's vision is the existence of a body of propositions – that is, propositions which are not only true but can be known noninferentially and with certitude to be true. Do we have any good reason to think that there are any such propositions? Or more relevantly, do we have any good reason to think there are enough such propositions to serve as a basis for all theory acceptance and rejection? (p. 42).