In a sweeping review of twentieth-century thought on epistemology, Alvin Plantinga finds little of value to the understanding of warrant. Plantinga argues that classical foundationalism is actually deontologism together with its consequent internalism and its emphasis on justification. Both internalism and its counterpart externalism have gone astray; not enough has been done to understand the nature of ‘this elusive quality or quantity which, or enough of which, stands between knowledge and mere true belief’. Roderick Chisholm believes, wrongly for Plantinga, that warrant is really justification, intimately connected with duty and responsibility. The author feels considerations of proper function demonstrate the inadequacy of BonJourian coherentism. Bayesianism ‘shows little promise as severally necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for warrant’. And he is critical of John Pollock, saying, ‘[I]t is perfectly possible for my epistemic norms to be incorrect norms and nowhere nearly sufficient for warrant.’ In conclusion, Plantinga is convinced that the notion of warrant is not explained well just by producing a set of severally necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. The second volume of his trilogy develops an alternative.

KEY WORDS: Warrant, Justification, Internalism, Externalism, Coherentism, Rationality, Reliabilism, Chisholm, BonJour, Deontologism, Epistemology, Foundationalism, Belief, Epistemic norms

According to Plantinga, epistemology is not dead, just confused. In Warrant: The Current Debate, his first of three volumes, Plantinga argues that classical foundationalism, dominant ever since the Enlightenment, is actually deontologism together with its consequent internalism and its emphasis on justification. The author believes that both internalism and its counterpart externalism have gone astray. In a sweeping review of twentieth-century thought on epistemology, Plantinga believes that not enough has been done to understand the nature of ‘this elusive quality or quantity which, or enough of which, stands between knowledge and mere true belief’.

Plantinga begins with internalism, the idea that what determines whether a belief is warranted for a person, are factors or states in some sense internal to that person; warrant-conferring properties are in some way internal to the subject or cognizer. There is some internal warrant. Internalism’s main proponent, with over thirty years of ‘penetrating accounts’, is Roderick Chisholm, who believes, wrongly for Plantinga, that warrant is really justification, intimately connected with duty and responsibility, ‘a matter of aptness for epistemic duty fulfilment’. Chisholmian internalism is actually a return to Descartes and Locke. When one believes or withholds something, then, Chisholm assumes, there is indeed something one believes or withholds. Epistemic reasonability is then having the largest set of logically independent beliefs, adding the true and false and accepting that which has the majority. Plantinga rejects this. He sees a ‘certain tension in Chisholm’s thought between what he officially says warrant is, and how he actually thinks about it’. Furthermore the fulfilment of epistemic obligation is nowhere nearly sufficient for warrant. He dismisses Chisholm’s ‘dutiful but malfunctioning epistemic agents’.

Next in Plantinga’s sights is Laurence BonJour and his coherentism. The coherentist claim is that in a proper noetic structure (how what we know relates to what else we know or can know), every belief is accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs. Like a Venn diagram, overlapping circles will be found and the warrant arises from those circles. BonJour endorses a traditional foundationalist account of a priori knowledge as ‘at least approximately correct’. Furthermore, a person is justified in her beliefs if and only if she is epistemically responsible (in regulating and governing belief acceptance and maintenance) in believing. But she governs her beliefs responsibly only if she accepts all and only those beliefs she has a good reason for thinking are true. Plantinga ‘detects a sort of incoherence in BonJour’s views, or at any rate an arbitrary partiality’. Considerations of proper function also demonstrate the inadequacy of BonJourian coherentism.

Although Bayesianism is routinely associated with rationality not warrant, Plantinga includes some its concepts in his discussion, as they are related to nearby notions such as justification, epistemic duty and epistemic integrity. For the author, Bayesian coherentism works with probability which contain an irreducibly normative element. ‘It is epistemically extremely probable (given our circumstances) that the earth is round.’ A second aspect is that belief comes in degrees; from here it is a short step to probabilistic coherence. Plantinga feels such thought, though, ‘shows little promise as severally necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for warrant. I must believe each necessary truth to the same degree: the maximal degree.’ He then explains that he believes arithmetic is incomplete and that he feels a mild pain in his left knee; he believes the former slightly less firmly than the latter. But that does not prevent him from knowing either or both of these propositions. The known propositions and the locus of incoherence coincide.

As none of the internalist tradition ‘offers the resources for a proper understanding of warrant or positive epistemic status’, Plantinga turns to externalism in the last part of his text. The externalist, by contrast, holds that warrant need not depend upon factors relevantly internal to the cognizer; warrant depends or supervenes upon properties to some of which the cognizer may have no special access, or even no epistemic access. On externalist views, warrant-making properties are those produced by a reliable belief-producing mechanism. None of these properties need special access. John Pollock argues that a belief is justified for a person if he arrives at it in conformity with his own norms. Plantinga responds by saying, ‘[I]t is perfectly possible for my epistemic norms to be incorrect norms and nowhere nearly sufficient for warrant.’ Perhaps reliabilism is a solution: a belief has warrant if and only if it is the product of a reliable belief-producing mechanism. This thought also fails. How can the reliabilist account for the fact that warrant comes in degrees? Secondly, a belief may be the product of a reliable belief-producing mechanism, but if the mechanism in question malfunctions, the resulting belief has little or no warrant.

In conclusion, Plantinga is convinced that the notion of warrant is not explained well just by producing a set of severally necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. While such a procedure works well in math or logic, it works less well in epistemology. A better way is to ‘specify the conditions governing the central paradigmatic core (necessary and sufficient conditions) together with some of the analogical extensions. It is certainly more complex and less stylish but we must heed Aristotle’s dictum not to expect more clarity than the subject permits.’