4 Short Philosophy Reflections...

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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.

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(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’.”

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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