Alvin Plantinga

Alvin Carl Plantinga
Born	(1932-11-05) November 5, 1932 Ann Arbor, Michigan
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 1932) is a contemporary American philosopher known for his work in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. In 1980, Plantinga was described by Time magazine as "America's leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God." He was portrayed in that same article as a central figure in a "quiet revolution" regarding the respectability of belief in God among academic philosophers. Plantinga has delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures on three separate occasions. He is also a proponent of Molinism in the debate over divine providence, despite growing up in the Dutch Reformed tradition. Plantinga is currently the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

Biography

Family

Plantinga was born on November 15, 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 is originally from the Dutch province of Friesland. Plantinga’s father earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Duke University and a Master's Degree in psychology, and taught several academic subjects at different 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 an emeritus professor of musicology at Yale University. His brother Terrell worked for CBS News.

In 1955, Plantinga married Kathleen De Boer. Plantinga and his wife have four children: Carl, Jane, Harry, and Ann. Both of his sons are professors at Calvin College, Carl in Film Studies and Harry in computer science. Harry is also the director of the college's Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Plantinga's older daughter, Jane Plantinga Pauw, is a pastor at Rainier Beach Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Seattle, Washington, and his younger daughter, Ann Kapteyn, is a missionary in Cameroon working for Wycliffe Bible Translators.

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 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 transferred to Yale University where he received his Ph.D. in 1958.

Teaching career

Plantinga began his career as an instructor in the philosophy department at Yale in 1957, and then in 1958 he became a professor of philosophy at Wayne State University. In 1963, he accepted a teaching job at Calvin College, where he replaced the retiring Jellema. He then spent the next 19 years at Calvin before moving to the University of Notre Dame in 1982.

Philosophical views

Free will defense

In The Nature of Necessity (1974), Plantinga presented his free will defense to the logical problem of evil. In the mid 20th century, atheist philosophers, most notably H.J. McCloskey and J.L. Mackie, had formalized the problem of evil in terms of logical consistency; that is, they argued that the existence of God and evil is logically contradictory. Plantinga makes a distinction between a defense and a theodicy: a theodicy is an attempt to give the actual reason why God permits evil to occur, whereas a defense tries to give only a possible reason for God permitting evil to occur. In his argument, Plantinga's aim is to show only the latter, namely that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, wholly good God is not inconsistent with the existence of evil. Today, the problem of evil is commonly framed in evidential form, which does not involve the claim that God and evil are logically contradictory or inconsistent.

Plantinga's argument has two basic stages. In this first stage he argues that the atheologian has failed to demonstrate that God and evil are logically incompatible. In the second stage he argues 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". His conception of transworld depravity amounts to the claim that there is at least one possible world in which an individual has morally significant freedom and does at least one morally wrong action. Plantinga's claim that transworld depravity is possible is not the claim that it is possible that everyone does at least one wrong act in every possible world. There is an important difference between the claim that there is at least one possible world where everyone does at least one immoral act and the claim that in every possible world everyone performs at least one immoral act. In standard possible world semantics, the second, stronger, claim amounts to saying that it is necessary that everyone perform at least one wrong act. Plantinga is not making any claim that strong.

However, despite Plantinga's argument, some philosophers have continued to defend the cogency of the logical problem of evil. Mackie, for example, was unimpressed by Plantinga's defense: "[H]ow could there be logically contingent states of affairs, prior to the creation and existence of any created beings with free will, which an omnipotent god would have to accept and put up with? This suggestion is simply incoherent. Indeed, by bringing in the notion of individual essences which determine—presumably non-causally—how Curly Smith, Satan, and the rest of us would choose freely or would act in each hypothetical situation, Plantinga has not rescued the free will defence but made its weaknesses all too clear."

Reformed epistemology

Plantinga's contributions to the field of epistemology include a contribution to religious epistemology which 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.

Modal ontological argument

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

Evolutionary argument against naturalism

In Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, he argues that the truth of evolution is an epistemic defeater for naturalism (i.e. if evolution is true, it undermines naturalism). His basic argument is that if evolution and naturalism are both true, human cognitive faculties evolved to produce beliefs that have survival value (maximizing one's success at "feeding, fighting, and reproducing"), not necessarily to produce beliefs that are true. Thus, since human cognitive faculties are tuned to survival rather than truth in the naturalism-cum-evolution model, there is reason to doubt the veracity of the products of those same faculties, including naturalism and evolution themselves. On the other hand, if God created man "in his image" by way of an evolutionary process (or any other means), then Plantinga argues our faculties would probably be reliable.

The argument does not assume any necessary correlation (or uncorrelation) between true beliefs and survival. Making the contrary assumption—that there is in fact a relatively strong correlation between truth and survival—if human belief-forming apparatus evolved giving a survival advantage, then it ought to yield truth since true beliefs confer a survival advantage. Plantinga counters that, while there may be overlap between true beliefs and beliefs that contribute to survival, the two kinds of beliefs are not the same, and he gives the following example with a man named 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.

Support for intelligent design movement

Plantinga has been described as a "design proponent" and "lending moral support to the design camp". He was a member of the 'Ad Hoc Origins Committee' that supported Philip E. Johnson's Darwin on Trial (considered to be part of the central canon of the IDM) against palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould's "devastating review" in Scientific American in 1992, and he provided a back-cover endorsement for the book. He is a member of the (now moribund) pro-intelligent design International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, and has presented at a number of intelligent design conferences.

Selected 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 (1987-1988 Gifford Lectures, online)
• Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507863-2 (1987-1988 Gifford Lectures)
• 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
• Knowledge of God (with Michael Tooley), Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. ISBN 0-63-119364-2

References

• "Self-profile" in Alvin Plantinga, James Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen ed., (Dordrecht: D. Riedle Pub. Co.), 1985
• Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross, Creationism's Trojan Horse. Oxford University Press, (January 8, 2004) ISBN 0195157427

Further reading

• 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.

Books about Plantinga

• Alvin Plantinga CUP 2007 ISBN 9780521671439 ed Deane-Peter Baker with contributions from Graham Oppy, Richard M. Gale, John Divers, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Kvanvig, James Beilby, Kelly James Clark, Peter Van Inwagen and Alvin Plantinga
• Alvin Plantinga (Profiles) Springer 1985 ed H. Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen ISBN 978-9027717634
• Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga Springer 2006 ed Thomas M. Crisp, Matthew Davidson , David Vander Laan with contributions from William P. Alston, Michael Bergmann, Richard Fumerton, Jenann Ismael, Jonathan Kvanvig, Trenton Merricks, Richard Otte, John Pollock, Michael C. Rea, Eleonore Stump, James Tomberlin, Peter van Inwagen, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Keith Yandell. ISBN 978-1402047329
• Alvin Plantinga and Christian Apologetics (Paternoster Theological Monographs) (Ashgate 2007) Keith Mascord
• Epistemology as Theology: An Evaluation of Alvin Plantinga's Religious Epistemology (Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies) by James Beilby Ashgate 2006 ISBN 978-0754638322

External links

• Alvin Plantinga's home page at the University of Notre Dame
• Plantinga's Curriculum Vitae, including a complete bibliography
• 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
• Warranted Christian Belief, volume 3 of Plantinga's Warrant series
• Warrant: The Current Debate Planinga's Gifford Lectures