Alvin Plantinga

Alvin Carl Plantinga
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Analytic
Main interests	Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion
Notable ideas	Reformed epistemology Free will defense Modal ontological argument Proper Function Reliabilism Evolutionary argument against naturalism

Alvin Carl Plantinga (born 15 November, 1932 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) is a contemporary American philosopher known for his work in epistemology, metaphysics, the philosophy of religion and modest support of intelligent design. He is currently the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Despite growing up in the Dutch Reformed tradition, Plantinga along with William Lane Craig, is a prominent proponent of Molinism in the debate over divine sovereignty and providence. He gave the 2004-5 Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews University, titled Science and Religion: Conflict or Concord (to be published).

Biography

Family

Plantinga was born on November 15th, 1932 in Ann Arbor, Michigan to Cornelius A. Plantinga and Lettie Plantinga. Plantinga's father was a first generation immigrant, born in the Netherlands . His family was from the part of the Netherlands known as Friesland. Plantinga’s father earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Duke University and a Master's Degree in psychology . His father taught several subjects at various colleges over the years. One of Plantinga's brothers, Cornelius "Neal" Plantinga, Jr., is a theologian and the current president of Calvin Theological Seminary. Another of his brothers, Leon, is a professor of musicology at Yale University . His brother Terrell worked for CBS News . In 1955, he married Kathleen De Boer . Plantinga and his wife have four children: Carl, Jane, William Harry, and Ann . Carl Plantinga, his oldest son, is a professor of Film Studies at Calvin College .

Education

At the end of 11th grade, Plantinga's father instructed Plantinga to skip his last year of high school and immediately enroll in college. Plantinga followed his father's advice and in 1949, a few months before his 17th birthday, he enrolled in Jamestown College, in Jamestown, North Dakota . During that same year, his father accepted a teaching job at Calvin College, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In January of 1950, Plantinga moved to Grand Rapids with his family and enrolled in Calvin College. During his first semester at Calvin, Plantinga applied for, and was awarded, a scholarship to attend Harvard University. Beginning in the fall of 1950, Plantinga spent two semesters at Harvard. In 1951, during Harvard's spring recess, Plantinga attended a few philosophy classes at Calvin College. He was so impressed with Calvin philosophy professor William Harry Jellema that he returned 1951 to Calvin College to study philosophy under Jellema . In 1954, Plantinga began his graduate studies at the University of Michigan where he studied under William Alston, William Frankena and Richard Cartwright, among others . A year later, in 1955, he transfered to Yale University where he received his Ph.D. in 1958 .

Teaching Career

Plantinga began his career as a philosophy professor in 1958 at Wayne State University. In 1963, he accepted a teaching job at Calvin College, where he replaced the retiring Harry Jelema . He then spent the next 20 years at Calvin College before moving to the University of Notre Dame.

Philosophical views

He is best known for:

• The "free will defense" to the logical problem of evil, particularly as expressed by J. L. Mackie. Plantinga's makes a distinction between a defense and a theodicy. A theodicy tries to justify God's permitting evil by explaining why God allows evil. A defense doesn't try to explain why God actually allows evil, but rather logically possible reason God could have for allowing evil. Plantinga does not offer a free will theodicy but rather a free will defense. He does not claim that God permits evil for the sake of free will but that it is logically possible that he allows evil for the purpose of free will. Plantinga's argument has two basic stages. In this first stage he argues that the atheologian has failed to demonstrate that God and evil to be logically incompatible. In the second stage he argues positively that the existence of God and the existence of evil are logically consistent. He does so by constructing a model that includes both the existence of God and the existence of evil. Among other things, his model includes the possibility of transworld depravity.

• A Christian religious epistemology that he dubs "reformed epistemology." According to Reformed epistemology, belief in God can be rational and justified even without arguments or evidence for the existence of God. More specifically, Plantinga argues that belief in God is properly basic. Plantinga eventually develops a religious externalist epistemology that, if true, explains how belief in God could be justified independently of evidence. His externalist epistemology, called "Proper functionalism," is a form of epistemological reliabilism.Plantinga develops his view of Reformed epistemology and Proper functionalism in a three volume work on epistemology. In the first book of the trilogy, Warrant: The Current Debate, Plantinga introduces, analyzes, and criticizes 20th century developments in analytic epistemology, particularly the works of 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.

• A modal version of the ontological argument. Plantinga uses modal logic to develop, in a more rigorous and formal way, Norman Malcolm's and Charles Hartshorne's modal ontological arguments.

• His "evolutionary argument against naturalism." Plantinga argues that the truth of evolution is a epistemic defeater for naturalism (i.e. if evolution is true, it undermines naturalism). His basic argument is that if evolution true, our cognitive faculties didn't evolve to produce true beliefs but rather beliefs that have survival value i.e. maximizing our success at "feeding, fighting, and reproducing"). If evolution is true and we have reason to think that our cognitive faculties developed in order to produce, not true beliefs, but rather beliefs that have survival value, then we have reason to doubt the truth of all of the products of our cognitive faculties. This includes naturalism. So, if evolution is true, it gives us reason to doubt evolution (and all other products of our cognitive faculties). An important criticism of this argument is that having true beliefs about the world contributes to surviving in the world. If our belief forming apparatus evolved to give us beliefs that help us survive, then they evolved to give us true beliefs because true beliefs contribute to surviving. Plantinga understands this importance of this objection and addresses it this way: While there may be overlap between true beliefs and beliefs that contribute to survival, the two kinds of beliefs are not that same. He give the following as an example. Consider Paul:

"Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief... Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it... Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour."

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. ISBN 0-8014-9735-3
• The Nature of Necessity, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. ISBN 0-19-824404-5
• God, Freedom, and Evil, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974. ISBN 0-04-100040-4
• Does God Have A Nature? Wisconsin, Marquette University Press, 1980. ISBN 0-87462-145-3
• and Nicholas Wolterstorff (eds) Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana & London, 1983. ISBN 0-268-00964-3
• Warrant: the Current Debate, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507861-6
• Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507863-2
• The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader, James F. Sennett (editor), William. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1998. ISBN 0-8028-4229-1
• Warranted Christian Belief, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 2000. ISBN 0-19-513192-4
• Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality ed. Matthew Davidson, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-510376-9

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.

External links

• Alvin Plantinga's home page at the University of Notre Dame
• Plantinga's Curriculum Vitae, including a complete bibliograpy
• Virtual Library of Christian Philosophy (largest collection of Plantinga's work on the web).
• A list of articles and lectures given by Plantinga
• "The Dawkins Confusion", Plantinga's review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion from Books and Culture magazine
• Alvin Plantinga: The Analytic Theist
• Alvin Plantinga's spiritual autobiography
• Review of Naturalism Defeated? by John F. Post
• Fitelson and Sober's rebuttal to Plantinga's argument against naturalism in PDF