Alvin Plantinga

Alvin Carl Plantinga (born 15 November, 1932 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, of Frisian ancestry) is a contemporary American philosopher known for his work in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. His current position is John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is a Calvinist, despite his professorial enrollment at a Catholic University. Like Richard Swinburne, he is a contemporary philosophical apologist for Christianity. He gave the 2004-5 Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews University, titled Science and Religion: Conflict or Concord (to be published).

Education

Plantinga won a scholarship to Harvard University, but left in 1951 to study at Calvin College (Grand Rapids), where William Harry Jellema was teaching philosophy. Following his time at Calvin, Plantinga studied at the University of Michigan from 1954-1955, alongside such future luminaries as William Alston, William Frankena and Nancy Cartwright. He received his doctorate from Yale University (1955-1958). He began teaching at Wayne State University, then spent almost 20 years at Calvin College before moving to the University of Notre Dame.

Philosophical views

He is best known for:

A contemporary redeployment of the ontological argument using modal logic. The argument, thanks also to Norman Malcolm and Charles Hartshorne, enjoyed renewed interest in the 20th century.
His "free will defense" response to J. L. Mackie's logical argument from evil, in which he introduced the concept of transworld depravity.
His "reformed epistemology" attacks on internalist foundationalism
His "Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism" (see below), discussed by 12 philosophers in Naturalism Defeated?

In 1993 Plantinga's first two volumes of an epistemological trilogy on the concept of warrant were published. These fueled the discussion about what has to be added to true belief in order to be able to say that we have knowledge. In the first book, Warrant: The Current Debate, Plantinga introduces, analyzes, and criticizes 20th century developments in Anglophone epistemology (Chisholm, BonJour, Alston, Goldman and others). In the second book, Warrant and Proper Function, he introduces the notion of warrant as an alternative to justification and goes deeper into topics like self-knowledge, memories, perception, and probability. In 2000, the third volume, Warranted Christian belief, was published. Plantinga applies his theory of warrant to the question of whether or not specifically Christian theistic belief can enjoy warrant. He argues that this is plausible. Notably, the book does not address whether or not Christian theism is true.

Evolutionary argument against naturalism

Plantinga has argued that evolutionary naturalism is incoherent ^*. To this end, he quotes Charles Darwin: Plantinga's argument contends that there are no good reasons to suppose that natural selection is truth-conducive, that is, generally successful in producing cognitive faculties with the ability to reliably perceive the external world — let alone to construct accurate cosmologies. He quotes contemporary philosopher of mind and philosophical naturalist Patricia Churchland to buttress this claim. Plantinga contends that if philosophical naturalism denies that reality is guided or directed somehow (say, toward the creation of humans with reliable cognitive faculties) and if evolution selects only for survival value, it is highly unlikely that evolutionary naturalism would yield cognitive faculties that accurately perceive reality. Plantinga does not deny that evolutionary naturalism could have produced reliable cognitive faculties, he simply argues that they provide no reason for believing that we have reliable cognitive faculties.^* Thus, asserting that naturalistic evolution is true is also asserting that one has a low probability of being right in any of his assertions. This, Plantinga argues, epistemically defeats the belief that naturalistic evolution is true. Ascribing truth to naturalism and evolution becomes self-referentially incoherent.

The general claim that naturalism undercuts its own justification was also argued by C. S. Lewis in the third chapter of his book Miracles. Plantinga, however, does not cite Lewis, and this may be because there are significant methodological differences between the two arguments. ^* Lewis' argument is investigated at length in C.S. Lewis' Dangerous Idea by Victor Reppert (ISBN 0830827323).

Bibliography

Works by Plantinga

(ed) Faith and Philosophy, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964.
(ed) The Ontological Argument, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965.
God and Other Minds, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967; rev. ed., 1990. 0801497353
The Nature of Necessity, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. 0198244045
God, Freedom, and Evil, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974. 0041000404
Does God Have A Nature? Wisconsin, Marquette University Press, 1980. 0874621453
and Nicholas Wolterstorff (eds) Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana & London, 1983. 0268009643
Warrant: the Current Debate, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1993. 0195078616
Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1993. 0195078632
The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader, James F. Sennett (editor), William. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1998. 0802842291
Warranted Christian Belief, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 2000. 0195131924
Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality ed. Matthew Davidson, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 0195103769

A full bibliography of writings published before 1985 can be found in "Bibliograpy of Alvin Plantinga", James E. Tomberlin and Peter Van Inwagen (eds) Alvin Plantinga, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985, pp. 399-410.

Representative assessment

Ferrer, Francisco S. Conesa, Dios Y el Mal, La Defensa del Teísmo Frente al problema del mal según Alvin Plantinga, Pamplona: University of Navarre Press, forthcoming.
Beilby, James (ed) Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York & London, 2002.
Kvanvig, Jonathan (ed), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge, Savage, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996.
Claramunt, Enrique R. Moros, Modalidad y esencia: La metaphysica de Alvin Plantinga Pamplona: University of Navarre Press, 1996.
McLeod, Mark S., Rationality and Theistic Belief: An Essay on Reformed Epistemology (Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion), Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
Linda Zagzebski (ed.), Rational Faith, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993.
Sennett, James, Modality, Probability, and Rationality: A Critical Examination of Alvin Plantinga's Philosophy, New York: P. Lang, 1992.
Hoitenga, Dewey, From Plato to Plantinga: an Introduction to Reformed Epistemology, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.
Parsons, Keith M., God and the Burden of Proof: Plantinga, Swinburne, and the Analytic Defense of Theism, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1989.
Tomberlin, James E., and Peter van Inwagen (eds) Alvin Plantinga, Profiles Volume 5, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Boston & Lancaster, 1985.

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