Abstract
The Proper Functionist account of warrant – like many otherexternalist accounts – is vulnerable to certain Gettier-style counterexamples involving accidentally true beliefs. In this paper, I briefly survey the development of the account, noting the way it was altered in response to such counterexamples. I then argue that Alvin Plantinga's latest amendment to the account is flawed insofar as it rules out cases of true beliefs which do intuitively strike us as knowledge, and that a conjecture recently put forward by Thomas Crisp is also defective. I conclude by presenting my own suggestion as to how the account can be made less vulnerable to counterexamples involving accidentally true beliefs. Although I stay within the confines of Proper Functionism here, I think that my proposal (modulo a few details) could be attached to other externalist accounts of warrant as well.
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Chignell, A. Accidentally True Belief and Warrant. Synthese 137, 445–458 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SYNT.0000004906.81978.84
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SYNT.0000004906.81978.84