A Tradition-Based Perspectival Response to Proper Functionalism

This chapter is Zagzebski’s first paper that discusses “the value problem,” or the problem that an account of knowledge must identify what makes knowledge better than mere true belief. One of the problems with reliabilism is that it does not explain what makes the good of knowledge greater than the good of true belief. In Virtues of the Mind she gave this objection only to process reliabilism. In this chapter she develops the objection in more detail, and argues that the problem pushes first in the direction of three offspring of process reliabilism—faculty reliabilism, proper functionalism, and agent reliabilism, and she then argues that an account of knowledge based on virtuous motives grounded in the motive for truth can solve the value problem.

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Proper functionalism: A better alternative?

Religious Studies ◽

10.1017/s0034412598004284 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 34 (2) ◽

pp. 119-134

Author(s):

SHAWN DAWSON

Keyword(s):

Religious Beliefs ◽

Theory Of Knowledge ◽

Proper Function ◽

Proper Functionalism ◽

Trade Offs ◽

Cast Doubt ◽

By Products

In this paper, I develop some internal problems with Alvin Plantanga's proper functionalist epistemology. I focus on: (1) how we know that a belief is the result of proper function and the special difficulties this occasions for religious beliefs; (2) what a properly functioning person should believe in various circumstances, and (3) the problem of design – whether the claim that God designed us can be reconciled with the claim that He was subject to trade-offs, compromises and unintended by-products. These serious internal problems cast doubt upon proper functionalism's fruitfulness as a theory of knowledge.

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