[Christoph]
>Now as regards your first Elvis scenario -- periodically I am being
>appeared to Elvisly, I form the belief that Elvis is alive, and I
>simply ignore counter-evidence others present to me -- I agree that I
>am violating some sort of intellectual duty. But you suggest that I
>may nonetheless be internally rational. According to Plantinga's
>requirement, however, it seems that I am *not* internally rational
>here.


Sure you are. This Elvis experience example is analogous to Plantinga's
references to situations where people have an overwhelming doxastic
experience and believe that their heads are made of glass or clay, or other
absurdities. (*Warranted Christian Belief,* pp. 111-112) He says that these
beliefs are not necessarily precluded by internal rationality. That was my
only point.

"Perhaps this proposition, that there heads are made of blown glass - seems
utterly obvious to them, as obvious as that 3+1=4. Then the problem lies
with this seeming, with their having this kind of doxastic experience. Given
this doxastic experience, what proper function requires (all else being
equal) is forming this belief; and that they do." (*Warranted Christian
Belief,* p. 112)


Now I originally said that the person in the first Elvis case could be
thought of as violating some intellectual obligations. But depending on what
obligations one has in mind, he may or may not be epistemically responsible.
And in any event, even if we could clear up the vagueness in the location
"epistemic responsibility," it is not obvious that internal rationality
requires epistemic responsibility, even if it does require that we do what
proper function requires with respect to epistemic responsibility. The
design plan may very well stipulate in some circumstances, "to hell with
epistemic duties of every sort!"

>Unless, of course, we read his "in general" as a proviso that
>would yield your result in the Elvis scenario. But then the question
>is: what could be the reason for dispensing with epistemic
>responsibility in scenarios such as this?

Alas, it isn't clear that the person is not epistemically responsible. This
is part of what is at issue. What is required for epistemic responsibility?
But even if he were not, it would not follow that he is not internally
rational, for proper function may not require any epistemic responsibility
in these circumstances. Again, much depends on what you load into epistemic
responsibility.

>One essential difference with respect to the first case is that I
>don't have Elvis experiences any more, although you probably don't
>want to rule out that I remember having had them.


One difference, but not essential, at least not to my point. All the example
aims to show is a situation where a person acquires a rationality defeater
and where withholding of belief (or no longer holding a firm belief) may
also be plausibly construed as an epistemic duty. The second case merely
shows that the person acquires a defeater for his belief that Elvis is
alive. Whether this belief was being sustained by the memorial belief <I had
experiences in which I saw Elvis> or the present experience of being
appeared to Elvisly is really not relevant to whether he gets a defeater. Ex
hypothesis, he does get a defeater, and he could even if he was still having
Elvis experiences.

>Perhaps you also
>want to suggest that my counter-evidence is somewhat stronger than in
>the first case.

No. I'm not suggesting that there is *any* defeater acquired in the first
case, though maybe he flouted an intellectual obligation to examine his
experience, and he would have acquired a defeater had he investigated the
matter. This is another reason for saying that in the first case the person
may be violating some intellectual obligation, but still be internally
rational. Internal rationality does not state that we have *an obligation*
to investigate our beliefs, but many deontological accounts of justification
do require such things. Moreover, some deontologists want defeaters to
include beliefs a person ought to hold, but may not in fact hold but would
if certain counterfactual conditions stipulating epistemic duties were
fulfilled. Again, the man in the first case may fail in this regard, but
this is no requirement for internal rationality.

>Yet, I am inclined to say that in the first scenario
>too I do acquire undercutting defeaters for my belief that Elvis is
>alive, given that people present counter-evidence to me. It's just a
>slightly different case of defeaters provided by testimony.

It is not Plantinga's view that a person S acquires a defeater for a belief
if someone *presents* counter evidence to S. If this were true, most of our
beliefs would be irrational, as we are presented with counter-evidence all
the time. Since my examples were illustrative of Plantinga's postion, his
view on defeaters is what is relevant here.

If a man walks down the street and tells me that he saw Elvis, is that a
rationality defeater for my belief that Elvis is dead? I think not. Suppose
Elvis' daughter tells me this? Is this not counter-evidence? Or suppose a
professor of philosophy provides great skeptical arguments against the
existence of an external world, do I thereby acquire a defeater for my
belief that there is an external world. I think not. Not if you are thinking
of internal
defeaters. Testimony can only provide an internal rationality defeater for a
person's belief if the person accepts both the defeater belief and sees its
defeating force for the defeatee. The point is that defeaters are relative
to a given person's noetic structure. Merely because some else give me
evidence against something I believe, this is hardly a defeater for my
belief.

>Furthermore, what is defeated are experiential reasons for my Elvis
>belief, only that in this first scenario I do not, as it were,
>"epistemically actualize" the defeaters I acquire.

You don't get the defeater at all, not in Plantinga's sense. You are
apparently working with an externalist view of defeaters. But I'm talking
about internalist defeaters that are drawn from the stock of a person's own
beliefs.

>Perhaps you think
>that these differences are responsible for the first scenario being
>one with internal rationality, but without deontological
>justification, and the second being one where we are dealing with
>both types of positive epistemic status.

The difference is that in the second case the person gets a rationality
defeater and in the first he gets no rationality defeater, though in the
second perhaps he would have acquired a defeater had he examined his beliefs
as perhaps he ought to have done. (Of course, the latter is an externalist
type defeater, externalist deontological counterfactual defeater, but
Plantinga has no such requirement for internal rationality).

Now it is a tricky situation to determine whether in the first case the man
is without deontological justification. This will depend on what sort of
epistemic duties he could plausibly have and also be blameworthy for
flouting. I was assuming that he had an obligation to investigate his
beliefs given his situation and that is was within his power to do so. But
he fails to do so. Hence, his belief is not justified. But he is internal
rational for the very reasons that Plantinga says Descartes' man men were.
Presumably they did what proper function demanded of them, even *generally
speaking* with respect to epistemic responsibility.

>In essence, do you mean that
>ignoring weak defeaters with respect to experiences may *not* violate
>epistemic duties, while ignoring stronger defeaters with respect to
>beliefs that are not supported by experiences (any more) *would*
>violate epistemic duties? This is an interesting idea, although in
>the present state I do not find it too convincing.

My examples do not contrast weak and strong defeaters at all, though I'm not
sure what this distinction is. In the first case, there simply is no
internalist
defeater and the description of the situation is analogous to ones that
Plantinga discusses and says are (or can be) cases of internal rationality.
The second case is designed to show how internal rationality and
justification can overlap by way of defeaters. That's all my examples were
intended to show, and both are rooted in Plantinga's own account of internal
rationality and proper function.

Peace,
Michael