4 Short Philosophy Reflections...
HIP_91
1
Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism
Alvin Plantinga
from Thomas D. Senor, ed. The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith: Essays in Honor of William P. Alston. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995: 191-215.
When I was a graduate student at Yale, the philosophy department prided itself on diversity: and
it was indeed diverse. There were idealists, pragmatists, phenomenologists, existentialists,
Whiteheadians, historians of philosophy, a token positivist, and what could only be described as
observers of the passing intellectual scene. In some ways, this was indeed something to take
pride in; a student could behold and encounter real live representatives of many of the main
traditions in philosophy. However, it also had an unintended and unhappy side effect. If anyone
raised a philosophical question, inside, but particularly outside of class, the typical response
would be to catalogue some of the various different answers the world has seen: there is the
Aristotelian answer, the existentialist answer, the Cartesian answer, Heidegger’s answer, perhaps
the Buddhist answer, and so on.
But the question “what is the truth about this matter?” was often greeted with disdain as unduly
naive. There are all these different answers, all endorsed by people of great intellectual power
and great dedication to philosophy; for every argument for one of these positions there is another
against it; would it not be excessively naive, or perhaps arbitrary, to suppose that one of these is
in fact true, the others being false? Or, if there really is a truth of the matter, so that one of them
is true and conflicting ones false, wouldn’t it be merely arbitrary, in the face of this
embarrassment of riches, to endorse one of them as the truth, consigning the others to falsehood?
How could you possibly know which was true?
Some urge a similar attitude with respect to the impressive variety of religions the world
displays. There are theistic religions, but also at least some non-theistic religions (or perhaps
nontheistic strands of religion) among the enormous variety of religions going under the names
“Hinduism” and “Buddhism”; among the theistic religions, there are strands of Hinduism and
Buddhism and American Indian religion as well as Islam, Judaism and Christianity; and all of
these differ significantly from each other. Isn’t it somehow arbitrary, or irrational, or unjustified,
or unwarranted, or even oppressive and imperialistic to endorse one of these as opposed to all the
others? According to Jean Bodin, “each is refuted by all”; 1 must we not agree? It is in this
neighborhood that the so-called “problem of pluralism” arises. Of course many concerns and
problems can come under this rubric; the specific problem I mean to discuss can be thought of as
follows. To put it in an internal and personal way, I find myself with religious beliefs, and
religious beliefs that I realize aren’t shared by nearly everyone else. For example, I believe both:
1 Colloquium Heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis, written by 1593 but first published in 1857.
English translation by Marion Kuntz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). The quotation is from the Kuntz
translation, p. 256.
2
(1) The world was created by God, an almighty, all-knowing and perfectly good personal being (one that holds beliefs, has aims, plans and intentions, and can act to
accomplish these aims)
and
(2) Human beings require salvation, and God has provided a unique way of salvation through the incarnation, life, sacrificial death and resurrection of his divine son.
Now there are many who do not believe these things. First, there are those who agree with me
on (1) but not (2): there are non-Christian theistic religions. Second, there are those who don’t
accept either (1) or (2), but nonetheless do believe that there is something beyond the natural
world, a something such that human well-being and salvation depend upon standing in a right
relation to it. And third, in the West and since the Enlightenment, anyway, there are people—
naturalists, we may call them—who don’t believe any of these three things. And my problem is
this: when I become really aware of these other ways of looking at the world, these other ways of
responding religiously to the world, what must or should I do? What is the right sort of attitude
to take? What sort of impact should this awareness have on the beliefs I hold and the strength
with which I hold them? My question is this: how should I think about the great religious
diversity the world in fact displays? Can I sensibly remain an adherent of just one of these
religions, rejecting the others? And here I am thinking specifically of beliefs. Of course there is
a great deal more to any religion or religious practice than just belief; and I don’t for a moment
mean to deny it. But belief is a crucially important part of most religions; it is a crucially
important part of my religion; and the question I mean to ask here is what the awareness of
religious diversity means or should mean for my religious beliefs.
Some speak here of a new awareness of religious diversity, and speak of this new awareness as
constituting (for us in the West) a crisis, a revolution, an intellectual development of the same
magnitude as the Copernican revolution of the 16th century and the alleged discovery of
evolution and our animal origins in the 19th. 2 No doubt there is at least some truth to this. Of
course the fact is all along many western Christians and Jews have known that there are other
religions, and that not nearly everyone shares their religion. 3 The ancient Israelites—some of the
prophets, say—were clearly aware of Canaanitish religion; and the apostle Paul said that he
preached “Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Greeks” (1 Corinthians
1:23). Other early Christians, the Christian martyrs, say, must have suspected that not everyone
believed as they did. The church fathers, in offering defenses of Christianity, were certainly
apprised of this fact; Origen, indeed, wrote an 8 volume reply to Celsus, who urged an argument
very similar to those urged by contemporary pluralists. Aquinas, again, was clearly aware of
those to whom he addressed the Summa Contra Gentiles; and the fact that there are non-
2 Thus Joseph Runzo: “Today, the impressive piety and evident rationality of the belief systems of other religious
traditions, inescapably confronts Christians with a crisis—and a potential revolution.” “God, Commitment, and
Other Faiths: Pluralism vs. Relativism”, Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 5, Number 4, October 1988, p. 343f. 3 As explained in detail in Robert Wilken, “Religious Pluralism and Early Christian Thought”, Pro Ecclesia 1
(1992). Wilken focuses on the third century; he explores Origen’s response to Celsus, and concludes that there are
striking parallels between Origen’s historical situation and ours. “What is different today, I suspect, is not that
Christianity has to confront other religions, but that we now call this situation ‘religious pluralism’.”
3
Christian religions would have come as no surprise to the Jesuit missionaries of the 16 th
and 17 th
centuries or to the Methodist missionaries of the 19th. To come to more recent times, when I
was a child, The Banner, the official publication of The Christian Reformed Church, contained a
small column for children; it was written by “Uncle Dick”, who exhorted us to save our nickels
and send them to our Indian cousins at the Navaho mission in New Mexico. Both we and our
elders knew that the Navahos had or had had a religion different from Christianity, and part of
the point of sending the nickels was to try to rectify that situation.
Still, in recent years probably more of us western Christian have become aware of the world’s
religious diversity; we have probably learned more about people of other religious persuasions,
and we have come to see more clearly that they display what looks like real piety, devoutness,
and spirituality. What is new, perhaps, is a more widespread sympathy for other religions, a
tendency to see them as more valuable, as containing more by way of truth, and a new feeling of
solidarity with their practitioners.
There are several possible reactions to awareness of religious diversity. One is to continue to
believe what you have all along believed; you learn about this diversity, but continue to believe,
i.e., take to be true, such propositions as (1) and (2) above, consequently taking to be false any
beliefs, religious or otherwise, that are incompatible with (1) and (2). Following current practice,
I shall call this exclusivism; the exclusivist holds that the tenets or some of the tenets of one
religion—Christianity, let’s say—are in fact true; he adds, naturally enough, that any
propositions, including other religious beliefs, that are incompatible with those tenets are false.
Now there is a fairly widespread belief that there is something seriously wrong with exclusivism.
It is irrational, or egotistical and unjustified 4 or intellectually arrogant,
5 or elitist,
6 or a
manifestation of harmful pride, 7 or even oppressive and imperialistic.
8 The claim is that
4 Thus Gary Gutting: “Applying these considerations to religious belief, we seem led to the conclusion that, because
believers have many epistemic peers who do not share their belief in God…, they have no right to maintain their
belief without a justification. If they do so, they are guilty of epistemological egoism.” Religious Belief and
Religious Skepticism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), p. 90 (but see the following pages for an
important qualification). 5 “Here my submission is that on this front the traditional doctrinal position of the Church has in fact militated
against its traditional moral position, and has in fact encouraged Christians to approach other men immorally. Christ
has taught us humility, but we have approached them with arrogance…This charge of arrogance is a serious one.”
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Religious Diversity (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 13. 6 Runzo: “Ethically, Religious Exclusivism has the morally repugnant result of making those who have privileged
knowledge, or who are intellectually astute, a religious elite, while penalizing those who happen to have no access to
the putatively correct religious view, or who are incapable of advanced understanding.” “God, Commitment, and
Other Faiths”, p. 348. 7 “But natural pride, despite its positive contribution to human life, becomes harmful when it is elevated to the level
of dogma and is built into the belief system of a religious community. This happens when its sense of its own
validity and worth is expressed in doctrines implying an exclusive or a decisively superior access to the truth or the
power to save.” John Hick, “Religious Pluralism and Absolute Claims,” Religious Pluralism (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 197.
8 Thus John Cobb: “I agree with the liberal theists that even in Pannenberg’s case, the quest for an absolute as a
basis for understanding reflects the long tradition of Christian imperialism and triumphalism rather than the
4
exclusivism as such is or involves a vice of some sort: it is wrong or deplorable; and it is this
claim I want to examine. I propose to argue that exclusivism need not involve either epistemic
or moral failure, and that furthermore something like it is wholly unavoidable, given our human
condition.
These objections are not to the truth of (1) or (2) or any other proposition someone might accept
in this exclusivist way (although, of course, objections of that sort are also put forward); they are
instead directed to the propriety or rightness of exclusivism. And there are initially two different
kinds of indictments of exclusivism: broadly moral or ethical indictments, and other broadly
intellectual or epistemic indictments. Of course these overlap in interesting ways as we shall see
below. But initially, anyway, we can take some of the complaints about exclusivism as
intellectual criticisms: it is irrational, or unjustified to think in an exclusivistic way. And the
other large body of complaint is moral: there is something morally suspect about exclusivism: it
is arbitrary, or intellectually arrogant, or imperialistic. As J. Runzo suggests, exclusivism is
“neither tolerable nor any longer intellectually honest in the context of our contemporary
knowledge of other faiths”. 9 I want to consider both kinds of claims or criticisms; I propose to
argue that the exclusivist is not as such necessarily guilty of any of these charges.
I: Moral Objections to Exclusivism
I first turn to the moral complaints: that the exclusivist is intellectually arrogant, or egotistical, or
self-servingly arbitrary, or dishonest, or imperialistic, or oppressive. But first: three
qualifications. An exclusivist, like anyone else, will probably be guilty of some or all of these
things to at least some degree, perhaps particularly the first two; the question is, however,
whether she is guilty of these things just by virtue of being an exclusivist. Secondly, I shall use
the term “exclusivism” in such a way that you don’t count as an exclusivist unless you are rather
fully aware of other faiths, have had their existence and their claims called to your attention with
some force and perhaps fairly frequently, and have to some degree reflected on the problem of
pluralism, asking yourself such questions as whether it is or could be really true that the Lord has
revealed himself and his programs to us Christians, say, in a way in which he hasn’t revealed
himself to those of other faiths. Thus my grandmother, for example, would not have counted as
an exclusivist. She had of course heard of the heathen, as she called them, but the idea that
perhaps Christians could learn from them, and learn from them with respect to religious matters,
had not so much as entered her head; and the fact that it hadn’t entered her head, I take it, was
not a matter of moral dereliction on her part. This same would go for a Buddhist or Hindu
peasant. These people are not, I think, plausibly charged with arrogance or other moral flaws in
believing as they do.
Third, suppose I am an exclusivist with respect to (1), for example, but non-culpably believe,
like Thomas Aquinas, say, that I have a knock-down, drag-out argument, a demonstration or
conclusive proof of the proposition that there is such a person as God; and suppose I think
pluralistic spirit.” “The Meaning of Pluralism for Christian Self-Understanding”, in Rouner,Religious Pluralism, p.
171. 9 “God, Commitment, and other Faiths: Pluralism vs. Relativism”,p. 357.
5
further (and non-culpably) that if those who don’t believe (1) were to be apprised of this
argument (and had the ability and training necessary to grasp it, and were to think about the
argument fairly and reflectively), they too would come to believe (1)? Then I could hardly be
charged with these moral faults. My condition would be like that of Gödel, let’s say, upon
having recognized that he had a proof for the incompleteness of arithmetic. True, many of his
colleagues and peers didn’t believe that arithmetic was incomplete, and some believed that it was
complete; but presumably Gödel wasn’t arbitrary or egotistical in believing that arithmetic is in
fact incomplete. Furthermore, he would not have been at fault had he non-culpably but
mistakenly believed that he had found such a proof.
Accordingly, I shall use the term “exclusivist” in such a way that you don’t count as an
exclusivist if you non-culpably think you know of a demonstration or conclusive argument for
the beliefs with respect to which you are an exclusivist, or even if you non-culpably think you
know of an argument that would convince all or most intelligent and honest people of the truth of
that proposition. So an exclusivist, as I use the term, not only believes something like (1) or (2)
and thinks false any proposition incompatible with it; she also meets a further condition C that is
hard to state precisely and in detail (and in fact any attempt to do so would involve a long and
presently irrelevant discussion of ceteris paribus clauses). Suffice it to say that C includes (1)
being rather fully aware of other religions, (2) knowing that there is much that at the least looks
like genuine piety and devoutness in them, and (3) believing that you know of no arguments that
would necessarily convince all or most honest and intelligent dissenters of your own religious
allegiances.
Given these qualifications then: why should we think that an exclusivist is properly charged with
these moral faults? I shall deal first and most briefly with charges of oppression and
imperialism: I think we must say that they are on the face of it wholly implausible. I daresay
there are some among you who reject some of the things I believe; I do not believe that you are
thereby oppressing me, even if you do not believe you have an argument that would convince
me. It is conceivable that exclusivism might in some way contribute to oppression, but it isn’t in
itself oppressive.
The important moral charge is that there is a sort of self-serving arbitrariness, an arrogance or
egotism, in accepting such propositions as (1) or (2) under condition C; exclusivism is guilty of
some serious moral fault or flaw. According to Wilfred Cantwell Smith, “…except at the cost of
insensitivity or delinquency, it is morally not possible actually to go out into the world and say to
devout, intelligent, fellow human beings: ‘…we believe that we know God and we are right; you
believe that you know God, and you are totally wrong’.” 10
10
Smith, Religious Diversity, p. 14. A similar statement: “Nor can we reasonably claim that our own form of religious experience, together with that of the tradition of which we are a part, is veridical whilst others are not. We
can of course claim this; and indeed virtually every religious tradition has done so, regarding alternative forms of
religion either as false or as confused and inferior versions of itself…Persons living within other traditions, then, are
equally justified in trusting their own distinctive religious experience and in forming their beliefs on the basis of it…
let us avoid the implausibly arbitrary dogma that religious experience is all delusory with the single exception of the
particular form enjoyed by the one who is speaking.” John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989), p. 235.
6
So what can the exclusivist have to say for herself? Well, it must be conceded immediately that
if she believes (1) or (2), then she must also believe that those who believe something
incompatible with them are mistaken and believe what is false. That’s no more than simple
logic. Furthermore, she must also believe that those who do not believe as she does—those who
believe neither (1) nor (2), whether or not they believe their negations—fail to believe something
that is true, deep, and important, and that she does believe. She must therefore see herself as
privileged with respect to those others—those others of both kinds. There is something of great
value, she must think, that she has and they lack. They are ignorant of something—something of
great importance—of which she has knowledge. But does this make her properly subject to the
above censure?
I think the answer must be no. Or if the answer is yes, then I think we have here a genuine moral
dilemma; for in our earthly life here below, as my Sunday School teacher used to say, there is no
real alternative; there is no reflective attitude which is not open to the same strictures. These
charges of arrogance are a philosophical tar baby: get close enough to them to use them against
the exclusivist, and you are likely to find them stuck fast to yourself. How so? Well, as an
exclusivist, I realize that I can’t convince others that they should believe as I do, but I
nonetheless continue to believe as I do: and the charge is that I am as a result arrogant or
egotistical, arbitrarily preferring my way of doing things to other ways. 11
But what are my
alternatives with respect to a proposition like (1)? There seem to be three choices. 12
I can
continue to hold it; I can withhold it, in Chisholm’s sense, believing neither it nor its denial, and
I can accept its denial.
Consider the third way, a way taken by those pluralists, who like John Hick, hold that such
propositions as (1) and (2) and their colleagues from other faiths are literally false, although in
some way still valid responses to the Real. This seems to me to be no advance at all with respect
to the arrogance or egotism problem; this is not a way out. For if I do this I will then be in the
very same condition as I am now: I will believe many propositions others don’t believe and will
be in condition C with respect to those propositions. For I will then believe the denials of (1) and
(2) (as well as the denials of many other propositions explicitly accepted by those of other
faiths). Many others, of course, do not believe the denials of (1) and (2), and in fact believe (1)
and (2). Further, I will not know of any arguments that can be counted on to persuade those who
do believe (1) or (2) (or propositions accepted by the adherents of other religions). I am
therefore in the condition of believing propositions that many others do not believe, and
furthermore am in condition C. If, in the case of those who believe (1) and (2), that is sufficient
for intellectual arrogance or egotism, the same goes for those who believe their denials.
11
“…the only reason for treating one’s tradition differently from others is the very human but not very cogent reason that it is one’s own!” Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 235.
12
To speak of choice here suggests that I can simply choose which of these three attitudes to adopt; but is that at all realistic? Are my beliefs to that degree within my control? Here I shall set aside the question whether and to what
degree my beliefs are subject to my control and within my power. Perhaps we have very little control over them;
then the moral critic of exclusivism can’t properly accuse the exclusivist of dereliction of moral duty, but he could
still argue that the exclusivist’s stance is unhappy, bad, a miserable state of affairs. Even if I can’t help it that I am
overbearing and conceited, my being that way is a bad state of affairs.
7
So consider the second option: I can instead withhold the proposition in question. I can say to
myself: “the right course here, given that I can’t or couldn’t convince these others of what I
believe, is to believe neither these propositions nor their denials”. The pluralist objector to
exclusivism can say that the right course, under condition C, is to abstain from believing the
offending proposition, and also abstain from believing its denial; call him, therefore, “the
abstemious pluralist”. But does he thus really avoid the condition that, on the part of the
exclusivist, leads to the charges of egotism and arrogance? Think, for a moment, about
disagreement. Disagreement, fundamentally, is a matter of adopting conflicting propositional
attitudes with respect to a given proposition. In the simplest and most familiar case, I disagree
with you if there is some proposition p such that I believe p and you believe ~p. But that’s just
the simplest case: there are also others. The one that is presently of interest is this: I believe p
and you withhold it, fail to believe it. Call the first kind of disagreement “contradicting”; call the
second “dissenting”.
My claim is that if contradicting others (under the condition C spelled out above) is arrogant and
egotistical, so is dissenting (under that same condition). For suppose you believe some
proposition p but I don’t: perhaps you believe that it is wrong to discriminate against people
simply on the grounds of race, but I, recognizing that there are many people who disagree with
you, do not believe this proposition. I don’t disbelieve it either, of course; but in the
circumstances I think the right thing to do is to abstain from belief. Then am I not implicitly
condemning your attitude, your believing the proposition, as somehow improper—naive,
perhaps, or unjustified, or in some other way less than optimal? I am implicitly saying that my
attitude is the superior one; I think my course of action here is the right one and yours somehow
wrong, inadequate, improper, in the circumstances at best second-rate. Of course I realize that
there is no question, here, of showing you that your attitude is wrong or improper or naive; so am
I not guilty of intellectual arrogance? Of a sort of egotism, thinking I know better than you,
arrogating to myself a privileged status with respect to you? The problem for the exclusivist was
that she was obliged to think she possessed a truth missed by many others; the problem for the
abstemious pluralist is that he is obliged to think that he possesses a virtue others don’t, or acts
rightly where others don’t. If, in conditions C, one is arrogant by way of believing a proposition
others don’t, isn’t one equally, under those reflective conditions, arrogant by way of withholding
a proposition others don’t?
Perhaps you will respond by saying that the abstemious pluralist gets into trouble, falls into
arrogance, by way of implicitly saying or believing that his way of proceeding is better or wiser
than other ways pursued by other people; and perhaps he can escape by abstaining from that
view as well. Can’t he escape the problem by refraining from believing that racial bigotry is
wrong, and also refraining from holding the view that it is better, under the conditions that
obtain, to withhold that proposition than to assert and believe it? Well, yes he can; then he has
no reason for his abstention; he doesn’t believe that abstention is better or more appropriate; he
simply does abstain. Does this get him off the egotistical hook? Perhaps. But then of course he
can’t, in consistency, also hold that there is something wrong with not abstaining, with coming
right out and believing that bigotry is wrong; he loses his objection to the exclusivist.
Accordingly, this way out is not available for the abstemious pluralist who accuses the
exclusivist of arrogance and egotism.
8
Indeed, I think we can show that the abstemious pluralist who brings charges of intellectual
arrogance against exclusivism is hoist with his own petard, holds a position that in a certain way
is self-referentially inconsistent in the circumstances. For he believes
(3) If S knows that others don’t believe p and that he is in condition C with respect to p, then S should not believe p
this or something like it is the ground of the charges he brings against the exclusivist. But of
course the abstemious pluralist realizes that many do not accept (3); and I suppose he also
realizes that it is unlikely that he can find arguments for (3) that will convince them; hence he
knows that he is in condition C. Given his acceptance of (3), therefore, the right course for him
is to abstain from believing (3). Under the conditions that do in fact obtain—namely his
knowledge that others don’t accept it and that condition C obtains—he can’t properly accept it.
I am therefore inclined to think that one can’t, in the circumstances, properly hold (3) or any
other proposition that will do the job. One can’t find here some principle on the basis of which
to hold that the exclusivist is doing the wrong thing, suffers from some moral fault—that is, one
can’t find such a principle that doesn’t, as we might put it, fall victim to itself.
So the abstemious pluralist is hoist with his own petard; but even apart from this dialectical
argument (which in any event some will think unduly cute) aren’t the charges unconvincing and
implausible? Of course I must concede that there are a variety of ways in which I can be and
have been intellectually arrogant and egotistic; I have certainly fallen into this vice in the past
and no doubt am not free of it now. But am I really arrogant and egotistic just by virtue of
believing what I know others don’t believe, where I can’t show them that I am right? Suppose I
think the matter over, consider the objections as carefully as I can, realize that I am finite and
furthermore a sinner, certainly no better than those with whom I disagree, and indeed inferior
both morally and intellectually to many who do not believe what I do; but suppose it still seems
clear to me that the proposition in question is true: can I really be behaving immorally in
continuing to believe it?
I am dead sure that it is wrong to try to advance my career by telling lies about my colleagues; I
realize there are those who disagree; I also realize that in all likelihood there is no way I can find
to show them that they are wrong; nonetheless I think they are wrong. If I think this after careful
reflection—if I consider the claims of those who disagree as sympathetically as I can, if I try
level best to ascertain the truth here—and it still seems to me sleazy, wrong and despicable to lie
about my colleagues to advance my career, could I really be doing something immoral in
continuing to believe as before? I can’t see how. If, after careful reflection and thought, you
find yourself convinced that the right propositional attitude to take to (1) and (2) in the face of
the facts of religious pluralism is abstention from belief, how could you properly be taxed with
egotism, either for so believing or for so abstaining? Even if you knew others did not agree with
you? So I can’t see how the moral charge against exclusivism can be sustained.
9
II: Epistemic Objections to Exclusivism
I turn now to epistemic objections to Exclusivism. There are many different specifically
epistemic virtues, and a corresponding plethora of epistemic vices; the ones with which the
exclusivist is most frequently charged, however, are irrationality and lack of justification in
holding his exclusivist beliefs. The claim is that as an exclusivist, he holds unjustified beliefs,
and/or irrational beliefs. Better, he is unjustified or irrational in holding these beliefs. I shall
therefore consider those two claims; and I shall argue that the exclusivistic views need not be
either unjustified or irrational. I shall then turn to the question whether his beliefs could have
warrant: that property, whatever precisely it is, that distinguishes knowledge from mere true
belief, and whether they could have enough warrant for knowledge.
A. Justification
The pluralist objector sometimes claims that to hold exclusivist views, in condition C, is
unjustified—epistemically unjustified. Is this true? And what does he mean when he makes this
claim? As even a brief glance at the contemporary epistemological literature will show,
justification is a protean and multifarious notion. 13
There are, I think, substantially two
possibilities as to what he means. The central core of the notion, its beating heart, the
paradigmatic center to which most of the myriad contemporary variations are related by way of
analogical extension and family resemblance, is the notion of being within one’s intellectual
rights, having violated no intellectual or cognitive duties or obligations in the formation and
sustenance of the belief in question. This is the palimpsest, going back to Descartes and
especially Locke, that underlies the multitudinous battery of contemporary inscriptions. There is
no space to argue that point here; but chances are when the pluralist objector to exclusivism
claims that the latter is unjustified, it is some notion lying in this neighborhood that he has in
mind. (And of course here we should note the very close connection between the moral
objections to exclusivism and the objection that exclusivism is epistemically unjustified.)
The duties involved, naturally enough, would be specifically epistemic duties: perhaps a duty to
proportion degree of belief to (propositional) evidence from what is certain, i.e., self-evident or
incorrigible, as with Locke, or perhaps to try one’s best to get into and stay in the right relation to
the truth, as with Roderick Chisholm, 14
the leading contemporary champion of the justificationist
tradition with respect to knowledge. But at present there is widespread (and as I see it, correct)
agreement that there is no duty of the Lockean kind. Perhaps there is one of the Chisholmian
kind; 15
but isn’t the exclusivist conforming to that duty if, after the sort of careful, indeed
13
See my “Justification in the Twentieth Century” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50, supplement (Fall, 1990), pp. 45 ff., and see chap. 1 of my Warrant: the Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993).
14
See the three editions of Theory of Knowlede referred to in footnote 22.
15
Some people think there is, and also think that withholding belief, abstaining from belief, is always and
automatically the safe course to take with respect to this duty, whenever any question arises as to what to believe
and withhold. But that isn’t so. One can go wrong by withholding as well as by believing: there is no safe haven
here, not even abstention. If there is a duty of the Chisholmian kind, and if I, out of epistemic pride and excessive
10
prayerful consideration I mentioned in the response to the moral objection, it still seems to him
strongly that (1), say, is true and he accordingly still believes it? It is therefore hard to see that
the exclusivist is necessarily unjustified in this way.
The second possibility for understanding the charge—the charge that exclusivism is
epistemically unjustified—has to do with the oft-repeated claim that exclusivism is intellectually
arbitrary. Perhaps the idea is that there is an intellectual duty to treat similar cases similarly; the
exclusivist violates this duty by arbitrarily choosing to believe (for the moment going along with
the fiction that we choose beliefs of this sort) (1) and (2) in the face of the plurality of conflicting
religious beliefs the world presents. But suppose there is such a duty. Clearly you do not violate
it if you non-culpably think the beliefs in question are not on a par. And as an exclusivist, I do
think (non-culpably, I hope) that they are not on a par: I think (1) and (2) true and those
incompatible with either of them false.
The rejoinder, of course, will be that it is not alethic parity (their having the same truth value)
that is at issue: it is epistemic parity that counts. What kind of epistemic parity? What would be
relevant, here, I should think, would be internal or internalist epistemic parity: parity with
respect to what is internally available to the believer. What is internally available to the believer
includes, for example, detectable relationships between the belief in question and other beliefs
you hold; so internal parity would include parity of propositional evidence. What is internally
available to the believer also includes the phenomenology that goes with the beliefs in question:
the sensuous phenomenology, but also the non-sensuous phenomenology involved, for example,
in the belief’s just having the feel of being right. But once more, then, (1) and (2) are not on an
internal par, for the exclusivist, with beliefs that are incompatible with them. (1) and (2), after
all, seem to me to be true; they have for me the phenomenology that accompanies that seeming.
The same cannot be said for propositions incompatible with them. If, furthermore, John Calvin
is right in thinking that there is such a thing as the Sensus Divinitatis and the Internal Testimony
of the Holy Spirit, then perhaps (1) and (2) are produced in me by those belief-producing
processes, and have for me the phenomenology that goes with them; the same is not true for
propositions incompatible with them.
But then the next rejoinder: isn’t it probably true that those who reject (1) and (2) in favor of
other beliefs have propositional evidence for their beliefs that is on a par with mine for my
beliefs; and isn’t it also probably true that the same or similar phenomenology accompanies their
beliefs as accompanies mine? So that those beliefs really are epistemically and internally on a
par with (1) and (2), and the exclusivist is still treating like cases differently? I don’t think so: I
think there really are arguments available for (1), at least, that are not available for its
competitors. And as for similar phenomenology, this is not easy to say; it is not easy to look into
the breast of another; the secrets of the human heart are hard to fathom; it hard indeed to discover
this sort of thing even with respect to someone you know really well. But I am prepared to
stipulate both sorts of parity. Let’s agree for purposes of argument that these beliefs are on an
epistemic par in the sense that those of a different religious tradition have the same sort of
internally available markers—evidence, phenomenology and the like—for their beliefs as I have
for (1) and (2). What follows?
scrupulosity succeed in training myself not to accept ordinary perceptual judgments in ordinary perceptual
circumstances, I am not performing works of epistemic supererogation; I am epistemically culpable.
11
Return to the case of moral belief. King David took Bathsheba, made her pregnant, and then,
after the failure of various stratagems to get her husband Uriah to think the baby was his,
arranged for him to be killed. The prophet Nathan came to David and told him a story about a
rich man and a poor man. The rich man had many flocks and herds; the poor man had only a
single ewe lamb, which grew up with his children, “ate at his table, drank from his cup, lay in his
bosom, and was like a daughter to him”. The rich man had unexpected guests. Instead of
slaughtering one of his own sheep, he took the poor man’s single ewe lamb, slaughtered it, and
served it to his guests. David exploded in anger: “The man who did this deserves to die!” Then,
in one of the most riveting passages in all the Bible, Nathan turns to David, stretches out his arm
and points to him, and declares, “You are that man!” And then David sees what he has done.
My interest here is in David’s reaction to the story. I agree with David: such injustice is utterly
and despicably wrong; there are really no words for it. I believe that such an action is wrong,
and I believe that the proposition that it isn’t wrong—either because really nothing is wrong, or
because even if some things are wrong, this isn’t—is false. As a matter of fact, there is isn’t a lot
I believe more strongly. I recognize, however, that there are those who disagree with me; and
once more, I doubt that I could find an argument to show them that I am right and they wrong.
Further, for all I know, their conflicting beliefs have for them the same internally available
epistemic markers, the same phenomenology, as mine have for me. Am I then being arbitrary,
treating similar cases differently in continuing to hold, as I do, that in fact that kind of behavior is
dreadfully wrong? I don’t think so. Am I wrong in thinking racial bigotry despicable, even
though I know that there are others who disagree, and even if I think they have the same internal
markers for their beliefs as I have for mine? I don’t think so. I believe in Serious Actualism, the
view that no objects have properties in worlds in which they do not exist, not even nonexistence.
Others do not believe this, and perhaps the internal markers of their dissenting views have for
them the same quality as my views have for me. Am I being arbitrary in continuing to think as I
do? I can’t see how.
And the reason here is this: in each of these cases, the believer in question doesn’t really think
the beliefs in question are on a relevant epistemic par. She may agree that she and those who
dissent are equally convinced of the truth of their belief, and even that they are internally on a
par, that the internally available markers are similar, or relevantly similar. But she must still
think that there is an important epistemic difference: she thinks that somehow the other person
has made a mistake, or has a blind spot, or hasn’t been wholly attentive, or hasn’t received some
grace she has, or is in some way epistemically less fortunate. And of course the pluralist critic is
in no better case. He thinks the thing to do when there is internal epistemic parity is to withhold
judgment; he knows that there are others who don’t think so, and for all he knows that belief has
internal parity with his; if he continue in that belief, therefore, he will be in the same condition as
the exclusivist; and if he doesn’t continue in this belief, he no longer has an objection to the
exclusivist.
But couldn’t I be wrong? Of course I could! But I don’t avoid that risk by withholding all
religious (or philosophical or moral) beliefs; I can go wrong that way as well as any other,
treating all religions, or all philosophical thoughts, or all moral views, as on a par. Again, there
is no safe haven here, no way to avoid risk. In particular, you won’t reach safe haven by trying
to take the same attitude towards all the historically available patterns of belief and withholding:
for in so doing you adopt a particular pattern of belief and withholding, one incompatible with
12
some adopted by others. You pays your money and you takes your choice, realizing that you,
like anyone else, can be desperately wrong. But what else can you do? You don’t really have an
alternative. And how can you do better than believe and withhold according to what, after
serious and responsible consideration, seems to you to be the right pattern of belief and
withholding?
B. Irrationality
I therefore can’t see how it can be sensibly maintained that the exclusivist is unjustified in his
exclusivistic views; but perhaps, as is sometimes claimed, he or his view is irrational.
Irrationality, however, is many things to many people; so there is a prior question: what is it to be
irrational? More exactly: precisely what quality is it that the objector is attributing to the
exclusivist (in condition C) when the former says the latter’s exclusivist beliefs are irrational?
Since the charge is never developed at all fully, it isn’t easy to say. So suppose we simply
consider the main varieties of irrationality (or, if you prefer, the main senses of “irrational”) and
ask whether any of them attach to the exclusivist just by virtue of being an exclusivist. I believe
there are substantially five varieties of rationality, five distinct but analogically 16
connected
senses of the term ‘rational’; fortunately not all of them require detailed consideration.
(1) Aristotelian Rationality. This is the sense in which man is a rational animal, one that has
ratio, one that can look before and after, can hold beliefs, make inferences and is capable of
knowledge. This is perhaps the basic sense, the one of which the others are analogical
extensions. It is also, presumably irrelevant in the present context; at any rate I hope the objector
does not mean to hold that an exclusivist will by that token no longer be a rational animal.
(2) The Deliverances of Reason. To be rational in the Aristotelian sense is to possess reason: the
power or thinking, believing, inferring, reasoning, knowing. Aristotelian rationality is thus
generic. But there is an important more specific sense lurking in the neighborhood; this is the
sense that goes with reason taken more narrowly, as the source of a priori knowledge and
belief. 17
An important use of “rational” analogically connected with the first has to do with
reason taken in this more narrow way. It is by reason thus construed that we know self-evident
beliefs—beliefs so obvious that you can’t so much as grasp them without seeing that they
couldn’t be false. These will be among the deliverances of reason. Of course there are other
beliefs—38 x 39 = 1482, for example—that are not self-evident, but are a consequence of self-
evident beliefs by way of arguments that are self-evidently valid; these too are among the
deliverances of reason. So say that the deliverances of reason is the set of those propositions that
are self-evident for us human beings, closed under self-evident consequence. This yields another
sense of rationality: a belief is rational if it is among the deliverances of reason and irrational if
16
In Aquinas’s sense, so that analogy may include causality, proportionality, resemblance, and the like. 17
But then (because of the Russell paradoxes) we can no longer take it that the deliverances of reason are closed
under self-evident consequence. See myWarrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993),
chap. 6.
13
it is contrary to the deliverances of reason. (A belief can therefore be neither rational nor
irrational, in this sense.) This sense of “rational” is an analogical extension of the fundamental
sense; but it is itself extended by analogy to still other senses. Thus we can broaden the category
of reason to include memory, experience, induction, probability, and whatever else goes into
science; this is the sense of the term when reason is sometimes contrasted with faith. And we
can also soften the requirement for self-evidence, recognizing both that self-evidence or a priori
warrant is a matter of degree, and that there are many propositions that have a priori warrant, but
are not such that no one who understands them can fail to believe them. 18
Is the exclusivist irrational in these senses? I think not; or at any rate the question whether he is
isn’t the question at issue. For his exclusivist beliefs are irrational in these senses only if there is
a good argument from the deliverances of reason (taken broadly) to the denials of what he
believes. I myself do not believe that there are any such arguments. Presumably the same goes
for the pluralist objector; at any rate his objection is not that (1) and (2) are demonstrably false or
even that there are good arguments against them from the deliverances of reason; his objection is
instead that there is something wrong or subpar with believing them in condition C. This sense
too, then, is irrelevant to our present concerns.
(3) The Deontological Sense. This sense of the term has to do with intellectual requirement, or
duty, or obligation: a person’s belief is irrational in this sense if in forming or holding it she
violates such a duty. This is the sense of ‘irrational’ in which, according to many contemporary
evidentialist objectors to theistic belief, those who believe in God without propositional evidence
are irrational. 19
Irrationality in this sense is a matter of failing to conform to intellectual or
epistemic duties; and the analogical connection with the first, Aristotelian sense is that these
duties are thought to be among the deliverances of reason (and hence among the deliverances of
the power by virtue of which human beings are rational in the Aristotelian sense). But we have
already considered whether the exclusivist is flouting duties; we need say no more about the
matter here. As we saw, the exclusivist is not necessarily irrational in this sense either.
(4) Zweckrationalität. A common and very important notion of rationality is means-end
rationality—what our Continental cousins, following Max Weber, sometimes call
Zweckrationalität, the sort of rationality displayed by your actions if they are well-calculated to
achieve your goals. (Again, the analogical connection with the first sense is clear: the
18
See my Warrant and Proper Function, chapter VI. Still another analogical extension: a person can be said to be irrational if he won’t listen to or pay attention to the deliverances of reason. He may be blinded by lust or inflamed
by passion, or deceived by pride: he might then act contrary to reason—act irrationally, but also believe irrationally.
Thus Locke: “Let never so much probability land on one side of a covetous man’s reasoning, and money on the
other, it is easy to foresee which will outweigh. Tell a man, passionately in love, that he is jilted; bring a score of
witnesses of the falsehood of his mistress, ‘tis ten to one but three kind words of hers, shall invalidate all their
testimonies…and though men cannot always openly gain-say, or resist the force of manifest probabilities, that make
against them; yet yield they not to the argument.” An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A.D. Woozley
(New York: World Publishing Co., 1963), bk. IV, sec. xx, p. 439.
19
Among those who offer this objection to theistic belief are, for example, Brand Blanshard, Reason and Belief
(London: Allen & Unwin, l974), pp. 400ff.; Antony Flew, The Presumption of Atheism (London: Pemberton, 1976),
pp. 22ff.; Michael Scriven, Primary Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 102ff. See my “Reason and
Belief in God” in Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds.,Faith and Rationality (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1983) p. 17ff.
14
calculation in question requires the power by virtue of which we are rational in Aristotle’s
sense.) Clearly there is a whole constellation of notions lurking in the nearby bushes: what
would in fact contribute to your goals, what you take it would contribute to your goals, what you
would take it would contribute to your goals if you were sufficiently acute, or knew enough, or
weren’t distracted by lust, greed, pride, ambition, and the like, what you would take it would
contribute to your goals if you weren’t thus distracted and were also to reflect sufficiently, and so
on. This notion of rationality has assumed enormous importance in the last 150 years or so.
(Among its laurels, for example, is the complete domination of the development of the discipline
of Economics.) Rationality thus construed is a matter of knowing how to get what you want; it is
the cunning of reason. Is the exclusivist properly charged with irrationality in this sense? Does
his believing in the way he does interfere with his attaining some of his goals, or is it a markedly
inferior way of attaining those goals?
An initial caveat: it isn’t clear that this notion of rationality applies to belief at all. It isn’t clear
that in believing something, I am acting to achieve some goal. If believing is an action at all, it is
very far from being the paradigmatic kind of action taken to achieve some end; we don’t have a
choice as to whether to have beliefs, and we don’t have a lot of choice with respect to which
beliefs we have. But suppose we set this caveat aside and stipulate for purposes of argument that
we have sufficient control over our beliefs for them to qualify as actions: would the exclusivist’s
beliefs then be irrational in this sense? Well, that depends upon what his goals are; if among his
goals for religious belief is, for example, not believing anything not believed by someone else,
then indeed it would be. But of course he needn’t have that goal. If I do have an end or goal in
holding such beliefs as (1) and (2), it would presumably be that of believing the truth on this
exceedingly important matter, or perhaps that of trying to get in touch as adequately as possible
with God, or more broadly with the deepest reality. And if (1) and (2) are true, believing them
will be a way of doing exactly that. It is only if they are not true, then, that believing them could
sensibly be thought to be irrational in this means-ends sense. Since the objector does not
propose to take as a premise the proposition that (1) and (2) are false—he holds only that there is
some flaw involved in believing them—this also is presumably not what he means.
(5) Rationality as Sanity and Proper Function. One in the grip of pathological confusion, or
flight of ideas, or certain kinds of agnosia, or the manic phase of manic-depressive psychosis will
often be said to be irrational; the episode may pass, after which he regains rationality. Here
“rationality” means absence of dysfunction, disorder, impairment, pathology with respect to
rational faculties. So this variety of rationality is again analogically related to Aristotelian
rationality; a person is rational in this sense when no malfunction obstructs her use of the
faculties by virtue of the possession of which she is rational in the Aristotelian sense. Rationality
as sanity does not require possession of particularly exalted rational faculties; it requires only
normality (in the non-statistical sense) or health, or proper function. This use of the term,
naturally enough, is prominent in psychiatric discussions—Oliver Sacks’s man who mistook his
wife for a hat, 20
for example, was thus irrational. 21
This fifth and final sense of rationality is
20
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (New York: Harper and Row, l987). 21
In this sense of the term, what is properly called an ‘irrational impulse’ may be perfectly rational: an irrational impulse is really one that goes contrary to the deliverances of reason; but undergoing such impulses need not be in
any way dysfunctional or a result of the impairment of cognitive faculties. To go back to some of William James’s
15
itself a family of analogically related senses. The fundamental sense here is that of sanity and
proper function; but there are other closely related senses. Thus we may say that a belief (in
certain circumstances) is irrational, not because no sane person would hold it, but because no
person who was sane and had also undergone a certain course of education would hold it, or
because no person who was sane and furthermore was as intelligent as we and our friends would
hold it; alternatively and more briefly the idea is not merely that no one who was functioning
properly in those circumstances would hold it, but rather no one who was functioning optimally,
as well or nearly as well as human beings ordinarily do (leaving aside the occasional great
genius) would hold it. And this sense of rationality leads directly to the notion of warrant; I turn
now to that notion; in treating it, we will also treat ambulando this fifth kind of irrationality.
C. Warrant
So the third version of the epistemic objection: that at any rate the exclusivist doesn’t have
warrant, or anyway much warrant (enough warrant for knowledge) for his exclusivistic views.
Many pluralists—for example, Hick, Runzo and Wilfred Cantwell Smith—unite in declaring that
at any rate the exclusivist certainly can’t know that his exclusivistic views are true. 22
But is this
really true? I shall argue briefly that it is not. At any rate from the perspective of each of the
major contemporary accounts of knowledge, it may very well be that the exclusivist knows (1) or
(2) or both. First, consider the two main internalistic accounts of knowledge: the justified true
belief account(s), and the coherentist account(s). As I have already argued, it seems clear that a
theist, a believer in (1), could certainly be justified (in the primary sense) in believing as she
does: she could be flouting no intellectual or cognitive duties or obligations. But then on the
most straightforward justified true belief account of knowledge, she can also know that it is
true—if, that is, it can be true. More exactly, what must be possible is that both the exclusivist is
justified in believing (1) and/or (2) and they be true. Presumably the pluralist does not mean to
dispute this possibility.
For concreteness, consider the account of justification given by the classical Chisholm. 23
On this
view, a belief has warrant for me to the extent that accepting it is apt for the fulfillment of my
epistemic duty, which (roughly speaking) is that of trying to get and remain in the right relation
to the truth. But if after the most careful, thorough, thoughtful, open and prayerful consideration,
examples, that I will survive my serious illness might be unlikely, given the statistics I know and my evidence
generally; perhaps we are so constructed, however, that when our faculties function properly in extreme situations,
we are more optimistic than the evidence warrants. This belief, then, is irrational in the sense that it goes contrary to
the deliverances of reason; it is rational in the sense that it doesn’t involve dysfunction. 22
Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, p. 234; Runzo,“God, Commitment, and Other Faiths,” p. 348; Smith, Religious Diversity, p. 16.
23
See his Perceiving: a Philosophical Study (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957), the three editions of Theory of Knowledge (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1st ed., l966, 2nd ed., l977, 3rd ed., 1989), and The Foundations of Knowing
(University of Minnesota Press, l982); and see my “Chisholmian Internalism”, in David Austin, ed., Philosophical
Analysis: a Defense by Example (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, l988), and chap. 2 of Warrant: the Current Debate.
16
it still seems to me—perhaps more strongly than ever—that (1) and (2) are true, then clearly
accepting them has great aptness for the fulfillment of that duty. 24
A similarly brief argument can be given with respect to coherentism, the view that what
constitutes warrant is coherence with some body of belief. We must distinguish two varieties of
coherentism. On the one hand, it might be held that what is required is coherence with some or
all of the other beliefs I actually hold; on the other that what is required is coherence with my
verific noetic structure (Keith Lehrer’s term): the set of beliefs that remains when all the false
ones are deleted or replaced by their contradictories. But surely a coherent set of beliefs could
include both (1) and (2) together with the beliefs involved in being in condition C; what would
be required, perhaps, would be that the set of beliefs contain some explanation of why it is that
others do not believe as I do. And if (1) and (2) are true, then surely (and a fortiori) there can be
coherent verific noetic structures that include them. Hence neither of these versions of
coherentism rules out the possibility that the exclusivist in condition C could know (1) and/or
(2).
And now consider the main externalist accounts. The most popular externalist account at present
would be one or another version of reliabilism. And there is an oft-repeated pluralistic argument
(an argument that goes back at least to John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and possibly all the way
back to the third century) that seems to be designed to appeal to reliabilist intuitions. The
conclusion of this argument is not always clear, but here is its premise, in John Hick’s words:
For it is evident that in some ninety-nine percent of cases the religion which an individual
professes and to which he or she adheres depends upon the accidents of birth. Someone
born to Buddhist parents in Thailand is very likely to be a Buddhist, someone born to
Muslim parents in Saudi Arabia to be a Muslim, someone born to Christian parents in
Mexico to be a Christian, and so on. 25
As a matter of sociological fact, this may be right. Furthermore, it can certainly produce a sense
of intellectual vertigo. But what is one to do with this fact, if fact it is, and what follows from it?
Does it follow, for example, that I ought not to accept the religious views that I have been
brought up to accept, or the ones that I find myself inclined to accept, or the ones that seem to me
to be true? Or that the belief-producing processes that have produced those beliefs in me are
unreliable? Surely not. Furthermore, self-referential problems once more loom; this argument is
another philosophical tar baby.
24
Of course there are many variations on this internalist theme. Consider briefly the postclassical Chisholm (see his
“The Place of Epistemic Justification” in Roberta Klein, ed., Philosophical Topics, 14, no. 1 (1986), p. 85, and the
intellectual autobiography in Roderick M. Chisholm, ed. Radu Bogdan [Dordrecht: D. Reidel, l986] pp. 52 ff.), who
bears a startling resemblance to Brentano. According to this view, justification is not deontological, but axiological.
To put it another way, warrant is not really a matter of justification, of fulfilling duty and obligation; it is instead a
question of whether a certain relation of fittingness holds between one’s evidential base (very roughly, the totality of
one’s present experiences and other beliefs) and the belief in question. (This relationship’s holding, of course, is a
valuable state of affairs; hence the axiology.) Can the exclusivist have warrant from this perspective? Well, without
knowing more about what this relation is, it isn’t easy to tell. But here at the least the postclassical Chisholmian
pluralist would owe us an explanation of why he thinks the exclusivist’s beliefs could not stand in this relation to his
evidence base. 25
An Interpretation of Religion, p. 2.
17
For suppose we concede that if I had been born in Madagascar rather than Michigan, my beliefs
would have been quite different. 26
(For one thing, I probably wouldn’t believe that I was born in
Michigan.) But of course the same goes for the pluralist. Pluralism isn’t and hasn’t been widely
popular in the world at large; if the pluralist had been born in Madagascar, or medieval France,
he probably wouldn’t have been a pluralist. Does it follow that he shouldn’t be a pluralist or that
his pluralistic beliefs are produced in him by an unreliable belief-producing process? I doubt it.
Suppose I hold
(4) If S’s religious or philosophical beliefs are such that if S had been born elsewhere and elsewhen, she wouldn’t have held them, then those beliefs are produced by unreliable
belief-producing mechanisms and hence have no warrant;
or something similar: then once more I will be hoist with my own petard. For in all probability,
someone born in Mexico to Christian parents wouldn’t believe (4) itself. No matter what
philosophical and religious beliefs we hold and withhold (so it seems) there are places and times
such that if we had been born there and then, then we would not have displayed the pattern of
holding and withholding of religious and philosophical beliefs we do display. As I said, this can
indeed be vertiginous; but what can we make of it? What can we infer from it about what has
warrant and how we should conduct our intellectual lives? That’s not easy to say. Can we infer
anything at all about what has warrant or how we should conduct our intellectual lives? Not
obviously.
To return to reliabilism then: for simplicity, let’s take the version of reliabilism according to
which S knows p iff the belief that p is produced in S by a reliable belief-producing mechanism
or process. I don’t have the space, here, to go into this matter in sufficient detail: but it seems
pretty clear that if (1) and (2) are true, then it could be that the beliefs that (1) and (2) be
produced in me by a reliable belief-producing process. For either we are thinking of concrete
belief-producing processes, like your memory or John’s powers of a priori reasoning (tokens as
opposed to types), or else we are thinking of types of belief-producing processes (type
reliabilism). The problem with the latter is that there are an enormous number of different types
of belief-producing processes for any given belief, some of which are reliable and some of which
are not; the problem (and a horrifying problem it is 27
) is to say which of these is the type the
reliability of which determines whether the belief in question has warrant. So the first (token
reliabilism) is the better way of stating reliabilism. But then clearly enough if (1) or (2) is true, it
could be produced in me by a reliable belief-producing process. Calvin’s Sensus Divinitatis, for
example, could be working in the exclusivist in such a way as to reliably produce the belief that
(1); Calvin’s Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit could do the same for (2). If (1) and (2) are
true, therefore, then from a reliabilist perspective there is no reason whatever to think that the
exclusivist might not know that they are true.
26
Actually this conditional as it stands is probably not true; the point must be stated with more care. Given my
parents and their proclivities, if I had been born in Madagascar, it would probably have been because my parents
were (Christian) missionaries there. 27
See Richard Feldman, “Reliability and Justification”, The Monist, 68 (1986), pp. 159-74, and chap. 9 of my
Warrant and Proper Function.
18
There is another brand of externalism which seems to me to be closer to the truth than
reliabilism: call it (faute de mieux) “proper functionalism”. This view can be stated to a first
approximation as follows: S knows p iff (1) the belief that p is produced in S by cognitive
faculties that are functioning properly (working as they ought to work, suffering from no
dysfunction), (2) the cognitive environment in which p is produced is appropriate for those
faculties, (3) the purpose of the module of the epistemic faculties producing the belief in question
is to produce true beliefs (alternatively: the module of the design plan governing the production
of p is aimed at the production of true beliefs), and (4) the objective probability of a belief’s
being true, given that it is produced under those conditions, is high. 28
All of this needs
explanation, of course; for present purposes, perhaps, we can collapse the account into the first
condition. But then clearly it could be, if (1) and (2) are true, that they are produced in me by
cognitive faculties functioning properly under condition C. For suppose (1) is true. Then it is
surely possible that God has created us human beings with something like Calvin’s Sensus
Divinitatis, a belief-producing process that in a wide variety of circumstances functions properly
to produce (1) or some very similar belief. Furthermore, it is also possible that in response to the
human condition of sin and misery, God has provided for us human beings a means of salvation,
which he has revealed in the Bible. Still further, perhaps he has arranged for us to come to
believe what he means to teach there by way of the operation of something like the Internal
Testimony of the Holy Spirit of which Calvin speaks. So on this view, too, if (1) and (2) are
true, it is certainly possible that the exclusivist know that they are. We can be sure that the
exclusivist’s views lack warrant and are irrational in this sense, then, only if they are false; but
the pluralist objector does not mean to claim that they are false; this version of the objection,
therefore, also fails. The exclusivist isn’t necessarily irrational, and indeed might know that (1)
and (2) are true, if indeed they are true.
All this seems right. But don’t the realities of religious pluralism count for anything at all? Is
there nothing at all to the claims of the pluralists? 29
Could that really be right? Of course not.
For many or most exclusivists, I think, an awareness of the enormous variety of human religious
response serves as a defeater for such beliefs as (1) and (2)—an undercutting defeater, as
opposed to a rebutting defeater. It calls into question, to some degree or other, the sources of
one’s belief in (1) or (2). It doesn’t or needn’t do so by way of an argument; and indeed there
isn’t a very powerful argument from the proposition that many apparently devout people around
the world dissent from (1) and (2) to the conclusion that (1) and (2) are false. Instead it works
more directly; it directly reduces the level of confidence or degree of belief in the proposition in
question. From a Christian perspective this situation of religious pluralism and our awareness of
it is itself a manifestation of our miserable human condition; and it may deprive us of some of
the comfort and peace the Lord has promised his followers. It can also deprive the exclusivist of
the knowledge that (1) and (2) are true, even if they are true and he believes that they are. Since
degree of warrant depends in part on degree of belief, it is possible, though not necessary, that
knowledge of the facts of religious pluralism should reduce an exclusivist’s degree of belief and
hence of warrant for (1) and (2) in such a way as to deprive him of knowledge of (1) and (2). He
might be such that if he hadn’t known the facts of pluralism, then he would have known (1) and
28
See chapter 10 of Warrant: the Current Debate and the first couple of chapters of my Warrant and Proper Function for exposition and defense of this way of thinking about warrant. 29
See W. P. Alston, “Religious Diversity and Perceptual Knowledge of God”,Faith and Philosophy, 5, (October
1988), pp. 433ff.
19
(2), but now that he does know those facts, he doesn’t know (1) and (2). In this way he may
come to know less by knowing more.
Things could go this way, with the exclusivist. On the other hand, they needn’t go this way.
Consider once more the moral parallel. Perhaps you have always believed it deeply wrong for a
counselor to use his position of trust to seduce a client. Perhaps you discover that others
disagree; they think it more like a minor peccadillo, like running a red light when there’s no
traffic; and you realize that possibly these people have the same internal markers for their beliefs
that you have for yours. You think the matter over more fully, imaginatively recreate and
rehearse such situations, become more aware of just what is involved in such a situation (the
breach of trust, the breaking of implied promises, the injustice and unfairness, the nasty irony of
a situation in which someone comes to a counselor seeking help but receives only hurt) and come
to believe even more firmly the belief that such an action is wrong—which belief, indeed, can in
this way acquire more warrant for you. But something similar can happen in the case of
religious beliefs. A fresh or heightened awareness of the facts of religious pluralism could bring
about a reappraisal of one’ s religious life, a reawakening, a new or renewed and deepened grasp
and apprehension of (1) and (2). From Calvin’s perspective, it could serve as an occasion for a
renewed and more powerful working of the belief-producing processes by which we come to
apprehend (1) and (2). In that way knowledge of the facts of pluralism could initially serve as a
defeater, but in the long run have precisely the opposite effect.
Alvin Plantinga University of Notre Dame
June, 1994