Abstract
For over 20 years, Alvin Plantinga has been advocating his Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism, or EAAN. We will argue that this argument functions as an atypical form of global skepticism, and Plantinga’s development of it has repercussions for other types of skepticism. First, we will go over the similarities and differences; for example, the standard ways of avoiding other forms of skepticism, namely by adopting some form of naturalized or externalist epistemology, do not work with the EAAN. Plantinga himself is a naturalized epistemologist, and his skepticism comes from within this perspective. Next, we will look at how Plantinga moved from presenting his skepticism diachronically, as a loop, to presenting it synchronically, as an infinite regress. Finally, we can extend this move from Plantinga’s skepticism to other forms of global skepticism, in so far as these will involve the rejection of our cognitive faculties’ reliability, and formulate them synchronically as well. Global skepticism is often accused of instability, since it leads us to skepticism about all of our beliefs, including belief in the skeptical scenario itself. Yet formulating it as an infinite regress rather than a loop allows the skeptical charge to go forward.
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Notes
Objective probability would be conditioned on the evidence, as well as on propositions such as that simpler hypotheses are more likely true than complex ones and that the future will resemble the past. The evidence criterion make it a type of logical probability, while the other criteria safeguard our probability assessments from being unduly influenced by problems of induction such as Hume’s or Goodman’s (Plantinga 1993, 162).
Those interested can peruse Beilby (2002) which contains several essays on the first premise.
However, he does make a few suggestions of what such a principle might look like (Plantinga 2002, 240).
Of course there are further differences between these scenarios as well, but they do not mitigate the point.
Van Cleve recognizes that this objection only works if we impute the implicit premise thesis to Plantinga: “For any propositions A and B that I believe, if B is improbable or inscrutable with respect to A, then A is a defeater for B unless A derives its warrant from B” (2002, 118, italics added). However, Plantinga rejects the implicit premise, as Van Cleve suspected he would (2002, 124), since one need not have any belief about the source(s) of warrant.
To be clear, this is a way to avoid the skepticism when one sees it approaching. It will not allow one to escape the skepticism once one is already enmired within it. The proposition that rejecting naturalism would obviate the skepticism is, after all, one more belief, and once one accepts the skepticism, one has a reason to withhold belief in this proposition as much as any other.
This is also the case for Plantinga’s analogies which end up with global skepticism: someone who takes the drug XX, or who thinks she is the victim of an evil genie, or who thinks she is just a brain in a vat, will realize, once she forms these beliefs, that she has a reason to distrust that belief. But once she distrusts it and rejects the global skepticism, the possibility that the belief is reliably formed opens up again, and so she thinks all or most of her beliefs are false.
Part of the concept of a defeater, as it was originally defined by John Pollock (1986, 38; 1987, 484), is that the defeater must be logically consistent with the defeatee. Otherwise, we are simply left with two mutually exclusive propositions but no clue regarding which one should be rejected and which one should be accepted. However, when it comes to self-defeat, the story is different: the defeatee is identical to the defeater, so there is no space to affirm the defeatee and go on one’s merry way. See Slagle (2013, 159–60).
In theory, the scientists stimulating the brain-in-a-vat could also mess with its rational capacities, like Descartes’s genie, but the exercise is generally used to just call the brain’s empirical beliefs into question. As such, our qualification may be superfluous.
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Slagle, J. Plantinga’s Skepticism. Philosophia 43, 1133–1145 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9647-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9647-x