Plantinga on properly basic belief in God: Lessons from the epistemology of perception

Philosophical Quarterly 61 (245):839-850 (2011)
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Abstract

Plantinga famously argues against evidentialism that belief in God can be properly basic. But the epistemology of cognitive faculties such as perception and memory which produce psychologically non-inferential beliefs shows that various inferentially justified theoretical beliefs are epistemically prior to our memory and perceptual beliefs, preventing the latter from being epistemically basic. Plantinga's analogy between the sensus divinitatis and these cognitive faculties suggests that the deliverances of the sensus divinitatis cannot be properly basic either. Objections by and on behalf of Plantinga to this argument are considered

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Jeremy Koons
Georgetown University

Citations of this work

Recent Work in Reformed Epistemology.Andrew Moon - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (12):879-891.
All Evidential Basing is Phenomenal Basing.Andrew Moon - 2019 - In J. Adam Carter & Patrick Bondy (eds.), Well Founded Belief: New Essays on the Epistemic Basing Relation. New York, USA: Routledge. pp. 34-52.

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References found in this work

Empiricism and the philosophy of mind.Wilfrid Sellars - 1956 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1:253-329.
.R. G. Swinburne - 1989 - Cambridge University Press.
The Essential Tension.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1978 - Philosophy of Science 45 (4):649-652.
``Is Belief in God Rational?".Alvin Plantinga - 1979 - In C. F. Delaney (ed.), Rationality and Religious Belief. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 7-27.
Plantinga on warrant.Richard Swinburne - 2001 - Religious Studies 37 (2):203-214.

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