PROPERLY BASIC THEISTIC BELIEF: A SESAME STREET OBJECTION

Think ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (47) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Ken Nickel
Keyword(s):  
Sesame Street ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Theistic Belief ◽  
Basic Beliefs

Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga wants everyone to agree that while sceptics will always be with us, no one is irrational in accepting what only the stubborn sceptic denies. Plantinga claims no one should be considered irrational for accepting what the religious sceptic denies either. Rather, the claim goes, belief in God should be as uncontroversial as any other properly basic belief sensible people happily hold without absolute proof sufficient to silence the sceptic. The legitimacy of placing theistic belief alongside other properly basic beliefs is challenged by the Sesame Street Objection: ‘one of these things is not like the others’.

The Crucial Disanalogies Between Properly Basic Belief and Belief in God

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Grigg
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Evidence ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Classical Foundationalism ◽  
Basic Beliefs

The antifoundationalist defence of belief in God set forth by Alvin Plantinga has been widely discussed in recent years. Classical foundationalism assumes that there are two kinds of beliefs that we are justified in holding: beliefs supported by evidence, and basic beliefs. Our basic beliefs are those bedrock beliefs that need no evidence to support them and upon which our other beliefs must rest. For the foundationalist, the only beliefs that can be properly basic are either self-evident, or incorrigible, or evident to the senses. Belief in God is none of these. Thus, says the foundationalist, belief in God is justified only if there is sufficient evidence to back it up.

Basic Theistic Belief

1986 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-464
Author(s):  
Bredo C. Johnsen
Keyword(s):  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Parallel Argument ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Reductio Ad Absurdum ◽  
Positive Argument ◽  
Theistic Belief

In several recent writings and in the 1980 Freemantle Lectures at Oxford, Alvin Plantinga has defended the idea that belief in God is ‘properly basic,’ by which he means that it is perfectly rational to hold such a belief without basing it on any other beliefs. The defense falls naturally into two broad parts: a positive argument for the rationality of such beliefs, and a rebuttal of the charge that if such a positive argument ‘succeeds,’ then a parallel argument will ‘succeed’ equally well in showing that belief in the Great Pumpkin is properly basic. (It is taken as obvious that ‘the Great Pumpkin objection,’ unrebutted, would constitute a reductio ad absurdum of the claim that the positive argument had succeeded in proving anything at all.) In this essay I shall argue both that Plantinga has partially misconceived the objection, and that he has not succeeded, indeed cannot succeed, in rebutting it, for the objection does in fact constitute a reductio ad absurdum of his position. For the sake of ease of exposition, I shall first provide a bare sketch of the positive argument, though I shall discuss it directly only as it bears on the attempted reductio.

UNDERSTANDING BASIC BELIEF: AN EVIDENTIALIST REPLY TO ALVIN PLANTINGA

Think ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (47) ◽  
pp. 57-78
Author(s):  
Andrew Norman
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Evidence ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Definitive Answer ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Evidential Basis ◽  
Standing Problem

Alvin Plantinga dealt a significant blow to the ‘sufficient evidence’ standard of rational accountability when he showed that many beliefs are, as he puts it, ‘properly basic’ – rationally permissible despite appearing to lack an evidential basis. Why, Plantinga asks, can't belief in God be considered properly basic? In this article, I provide a workable account of proper basicality, thereby repairing a long-standing problem with evidentialism. This deepens our understanding of what it means to be rationally responsible, and allows a definitive answer to the theological question: God-belief, it turns out, cannot be considered properly basic.

Mystical Experience and Non–Basically Justified Belief

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Levine
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Warrant ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Basic Beliefs

Two theses are central to foundationalism. First, the foundationalist claims that there is a class of propositions, a class of empirical contingent beliefs, that are ‘immediately justified’. Alternatively, one can describe these beliefs as ‘self–evident’, ‘non–inferentially justified’, or ‘self–warranted’, though these are not always regarded as entailing one another. The justification or epistemic warrant for these beliefs is not derived from other justified beliefs through inductive evidential support or deductive methods of inference. These ‘basic beliefs’ constitute the foundations of empirical knowledge. One can give a reason for the justification of a basic belief even though the justification for that belief is not based on other beliefs. Thus, according to Chisholm, if asked what one's justification was for thinking that one knew, presently, that one is thinking about a city one takes to be Albuquerque, one could simply say ‘what justifies me…is simply the fact that I am thinking about a city I take to be Albuquerque’.

Faith and Goodness

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 167-191
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
The Other ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Richard Swinburne ◽  
The Relationship

Recent work on the subject of faith has tended to focus on the epistemology of religious belief, considering such issues as whether beliefs held in faith are rational and how they may be justified. Richard Swinburne, for example, has developed an intricate explanation of the relationship between the propositions of faith and the evidence for them. Alvin Plantinga, on the other hand, has maintained that belief in God may be properly basic, that is, that a belief that God exists can be part of the foundation of a rational noetic structure. This sort of work has been useful in drawing attention to significant issues in the epistemology of religion, but these approaches to faith seem to me also to deepen some long-standing perplexities about traditional Christian views of faith.

The Return of the God Hypothesis

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Meyer ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Theistic Belief

Historian of science Frederic Bumham has stated that the "God hypothesis" is now more respectable hypothesis than at any time in the last one hundred years. This essay explores recent evidence from cosmology, physics, and biology, which provides epistemoiogical support, though not proof, for belief in God as conceived by a theistic worldview. It develops a notion of epistemoiogical support based upon explanatory power, rather than just deductive entailment. It also evaluates the explanatory power of theism and its main metaphysical competitors with respect to several classes of scientific evidence. The cmclusion follows that theism explains a wide ensemble of metaphysically-significant evidences more adequately and comprehensively than other major worldviews or metaphysical systems. Thus, unlike much recent scholarship that characterizes science as either conflicting with theistic belief or entirely neutral with respect to it, this essay concludes that scientific evidence actually supports such.

Basic beliefs and Christian faith

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
GREGORY W. DAWES
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Argument From Evil ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
Basic Beliefs ◽  
Christian Beliefs

AbstractIn rejecting Plantinga's ‘reformed epistemology’, Jeremy Koons has argued that no beliefs are epistemically basic, since even perceptual beliefs arise from observations that are theory-dependent. But even if all observations are theory-dependent, not all theories are alike. Beliefs that are dependent on uncontroversial bodies of theory may be ‘basic’ in the sense that they play a foundational role in the acquisition of knowledge. There is, however, another problem with reformed epistemology. It is that even if Christian beliefs were basic in this sense, they could face evidential challenge, for the epistemic status of a ‘basic’ belief depends, in part, on its probabilistic or explanatory relations to our other beliefs. It follows that Christian faith remains vulnerable to evidential arguments, such as Paul Draper's argument from evil.

Foundationalism and Peter's Confession

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-413
Author(s):  
Marcus Hester
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Middle Ages

One part of the Clifford–James dispute is still with us, namely a more inclusive foundationalism which has grown out of criticism of evidentialism in relation to belief in God. ‘Evidentialism’ will here mean the view, attributed to thinkers in the middle ages, that foundational premises must be either self-evident or evident to the senses. One answer now given by some (chiefly Plantinga) to such foundational questions is that belief in God is a properly basic belief, though not properly basic in an evidentialist sense. Thus one can rationally hold such a belief without proving it by argument. I will argue that belief in some specific personal God, such as Allah, Yahweh or Jesus as the Christ (Peter's confession), as constituted by sacred texts is the form belief takes for Christian believers and that there are special questions as to whether such beliefs can be shown to be properly basic.

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