Abstract
There is widespread consensus that there are undercutting and rebutting defeaters that diminish or destroy the warrant of a belief B. I argue that there are counterparts of defeaters: the counterparts of undercutting defeaters are “requirement fulfillment beliefs”, the counterparts of rebutting defeaters are “consistency beliefs”. These beliefs confirm the warrant of B, I therefore call them “confirmers”.
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Notes
Plantinga (2000), p. 156: “a belief has warrant for a person S only if that belief is produced in S by cognitive faculties functioning properly (subject to no dysfunction) in a cognitive environment that is appropriate for S’s kind of cognitive faculties, according to a design plan that is successfully aimed at truth.”
In (Plantinga 2000, pp. 359–360) he mentions that there are not only what he calls ”rationality defeaters” (i.e. internal defeaters) , but also “warrant defeaters”. He gives as an example the famous fake barn story: You see a barn at some distance and you form the true belief “there is a barn”. What you don’t know is that there are a lot of fake barns in this area and therefore your belief is only true by accident and so you don’t know that there is a barn. In this case the warrant-requirement R (iii) is not fulfilled. But that is obviously not an internal, but an external defeater. This usage of the term seems hard to reconcile with other statements: later on (Plantinga 2000, p. 361) he insists that for a potential defeater \(D\) to become an actual defeater it is not only required that I believe \(D\) but also that I believe that \(D\) is a defeater for \(B\). I don’t see, how the fake barn scenario can meet these requirements. \(S\) does not even believe \(D\), let alone believe that \(D\) is a defeater of \(B\). The definition he gives (2000, p. 363) requires at least that I believe \(D\). But if I believe \(D\) (“most barns in this area are fake barns”) I no longer have a “warrant defeater” but an (internal) undercutting defeater. In this paper I will not speak of defeaters in the sense of “warrant defeaters.” If not otherwise indicated, I will use the term “defeaters” in accordance with Platinga’s normal usage and his definition in the sense of internal defeaters.
That is what he means by “argument”, as the context of the passage clearly shows.
I owe this observation to one of the reviewers.
Bergmann (2006, pp. 166–167) discusses a similar question (whether unjustified defeaters can remove justification) but he follows another line of thought.
The same is true, e.g. for the all the conditions (B)–(D): if only one condition is not fulfilled, the requirement is not fulfilled.
Bergmann (2006, pp. 170–171) and Plantinga (2000, p. 361) call a rebutting belief \(D\) only in such cases a defeater where the person realizes that \(D\) is inconsistent with other beliefs. Bergmann thinks the person should have a defeater, but she “fails to put two and two together”. Plantinga speaks of a potential defeater that will become an actual defeater as soon as the person realizes the inconsistency.
On the other hand, the definition of defeaters that Plantinga (2000, p. 363) gives has no explicit requirement that a belief must be realized as a defeater. According to this definition for \(D\) to be a defeater of \(B\) it is enough that \(S\) believes \(D\) and that a person “whose cognitive faculties are functioning properly in the relevant respects” would give up \(B\). I am inclined to think that the task of the ”cognitive faculties” who have to function properly “in the relevant respects” is not only to remove realized inconsistencies, but also to detect inconsistencies. In this case \(S\) has a defeater as soon as she believes D, it is not necessary that she believes that \(D\) is a defeater.
References
Bergmann, M. (1997). Internalism externalism and the no-defeater condition. Synthese, 110, 399–417.
Bergmann, M. (2005). Defeaters and higher-level requirements. The Philosophical Quarterly, 55, 419–436.
Bergmann, M. (2006). Justification without awareness. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kvanvig, J. (2007). Two approaches to epistemic defeat. In D. Baker (Ed.), Alvin Plantinga (pp. 107–124). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Klein, RT. Where there are internal defeaters, there are “confirmers”. Synthese 191, 2715–2728 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0415-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0415-4