John asked:
> Does Plantinga deal with the possibility that naturalism my both
>be unwarranted because defeated but count as a justified belief?

I think Plantinga would agree that naturalism could be held as a justified
belief. After all, he admits that one can justifiably believe in the Great
Pumpkin. Of course, a person would not be justified in holding a naturalism
belief if the person had a defeater for it. But believing naturalism doesn't
automatically give a person a defeater for anything. One must presumably
believe something about the negative epistemic implications of this
metaphysical belief. One would have to believe naturalism and see its
negative implications for, say, cognitive reliability. (One would also have
to factor in the relevant rest of a person't noetic structure). But surely
many naturalists do not believe that, for instance, the conjuction of
evolution and naturalism renders a low or inscrutable probability for
cognitive reliability. Or maybe they do, but this probability is judged not
to be low given additional background knowledge. They would not have a
rationality defeater for naturalism in such cases.

A belief that is unwarranted or proper function irrational can be justified.
Suppose I suffer from Presleyania Oikia, a rare cognitive disorder that
produces "Elvis sightings" in the presence of large accumulations of tacky
1970s furniture and home decor. I'm not aware that I suffer from this
malady. And given that I live in Memphis, perhaps it is unreasonable to
suppose that I would suspect that anything is amiss. After all, lots of
people around Memphis claim to see Elvis. The belief is unwarranted since it
is produced by a cognitive disorder of some sort, but I may very well be
within my intellectual rights in holding the belief. And presumably, I would
also be within my intellectual rights in holding beliefs that follow
deductively or probabilistically from such a belief (assuming I see the
inferential connection).

> Suppose
>that the naturalist is able to pay cash on his promissory notes at some
>point, that is suppose that empirical science is able to subsume all
>empirical data under law-like explanations with absolute predictive power
>such that the "God hypothesis" is completely unnecessary and things like
>per se intentionality, spiritual substances, free will, etc. are all seen
>to be best regarded as mistakes since the play no role in the best
>empirical explanation. In that case, wouldn't naturalism still be a
>justified view inspite of the self-defeating argument?

It seems like it surely could. After all, if beliefs produced by pathologies
can be justified and transfer justification to other beliefs, then surely in
the presence of what we take to be good evidence for a hypothesis, we are
justified in accepting it, all other things be equal. In fact, we might be
unjustified to do otherwise.

The theist might simply locate belief in naturalism as on the same level as
Elvis sightings, a delusion, pathology, cognitive disorder, or perhaps wish
fulfillment, which has no warrant but which may very well be deontologically
justified. Recall that also that I argued in one publication that given
Plantinga's view of proper function rationality, agnosticism could be proper
function rational. Since that article of course, while Plantinga was still
writing *Warranted Christian Belief* he ended up distinguishing both
internal and external dimensions of proper function rationality. So my
article must be slightly modified, but I think the basic point still holds.

You may read this paper at:

http://www.homestead.com/philofreligion/files/RRU.html

Michael
--------------------------------------------

Dr. Michael Sudduth
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Saint Michael's College
Box #399
Colchester, Vermont 05439

Webpage: http://www.homestead.com/philofreligion/