why we need proper function alvin plantinga

8/13/2019 Why We Need Proper Function Alvin Plantinga

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NOUS 27:1 (1993) 66-82

WhyWeNeed ProperFunctionALVINPLANTINGA

Universityof Notre DameFirst, I wish to express my gratitudeto Professors Sosa and Feldman:I havelearnedmuch from their searchingandcarefully craftedpapers.I shallbegin byresponding o the criticisms they make of my books; thenI shall turnto broaderconsiderations.

I. FeldmanFeldman'scriticismscome in two sortsanddisplay a nice symmetrical tructure.First, there is criticismof the criticismI make of othersin Warrant: he CurrentDebate; then there is criticismof my account of knowledge in WarrantandProper Function.The criticismof my criticismof others tself comes in two parts.First,Feldmancriticizes some of the counterexamples use to try to show thattheviews of others are wanting;then second he claims that when my counterex-amplesarerepaired, s he thinks heycanbe, theydon'treally damagethe views Imean to criticize, because they don't show anythingnot alreadyconceded bythose whoputforththeviews underattack.A. Feldman and my CounterexamplesI proposed to use the term 'warrant' for that property or quantity, whateverprecisely it is, enoughof whichdistinguishesknowledge frommere true belief. Ithen argued by counterexample hat certain popular accounts of warrantaremistaken. According to Feldman, however, some or many of these counterex-amplesare defective. How so? Manyof them tendtowards he unduly outre;butthatisn't the problem.The problem s rather hatthey arenot given in sufficientdetail;the fact is they can be filled out in such a way thatthey are compatiblewith the views they are directedagainst, so that they aren't really counterex-amplesat all.

?1993 Basil Blackwell, Inc., 238 Main Street, Cambridge,MA 02142, USA, and 108Cowley Road, OxfordOX4 IJF, UK.66


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WHYWENEEDPROPERFUNCTION 67This isn't a large point, since (as Feldmanconcedes) they can also be filledout so thatthey are counterexamples.But by way of brief self-exculpation:hereare two kinds of counterexamples.Someone claims thatA entailsB; in the firstkind of counterexample,you present a state of affairs C thatis clearlypossible,andthat entailsor includesbothA and-B. Inthe secondkind,you presenta stateof affairsC thatclearly entailsA and is clearlycompatiblewith-B, thusshowingthatA and -B is possible and hence thatA does not entail B. (So a counterex-ample of the secondkind is successfulif it can be filled out to a counterexampleof the firstkind.)A counterexample f the firstkindfails if C is compatiblewithB; butthat sn't a cogent criticismof a counterexample f the secondkind.All Chas to be, in a counterexampleof the second kind, is clearlypossible, sufficientfor A, and clearly compatiblewith -B. I am encouraged o thinkmy counterex-amples of this kind were successful, since Feldmanhad no troublefilling themout to counterexamples f thefirstkind.So suppose we turn to the second and centralcriticismhere: that when mycounterexamplesare properly filled out, they don't really damage the views Imeanto criticize.This, says Feldman, s becausethey turn nto Gettierexampleswhen filled out; and thus they fail to show anythingnot alreadyconceded bythose who advancethe views againstwhich they aredirected.Exactlyhow doesthisgo? In Warrant: heCurrentDebate, I criticize internalistandjustificationistviews. Among them is evidentialism,an importantview with a long and distin-guishedhistory,and a view endorsedby Feldmanhimself. On thisview, a beliefis justifiedfor S if andonly if (in Feldman'sversion) it fits S's evidence. Now toevaluate evidentialism,it is crucially important o decide what is to count asevidence. First, there s propositionalevidence:I have propositional vidence forone of my beliefs if it is evidentiallysupportedby one or more other beliefs Ihold.2Second, thereis phenomenalevidence. One kind of phenomenalevidenceis sensuous evidence, for example, sensuous imagery of the sort involved invisual (and other sortsof) perception.What we have in these cases is 'the evi-dence of the senses'-the phenomenological sensuous evidence furnishedbyway of being appeared o in those characteristicways involved in perception.Now if we construe'evidence' in sucha way thatit is limited to propositionalandsensuousevidence, then itting the evidence isn't even necessaryfor warrant.For in large and importantareas of our cognitive establishment,there is verylittle by way of sensuousimagery,and whatthere is is not connectedwith war-rant. Considermemory. You remembermeeting Paul in California ast month;but thereneed be little by way of sensuous imagery. For some people, appar-ently, there isn't any sensuous imagery; and for the rest of us, the sensuousimagerythere is doesn't play an evidentialrole.3 (You don't remember hat it isCaliforniawhere you saw Paul by virtueof the sensuous imagerythat accom-panies the memory;the same sensuous imagerymight accompanythe memorythatyou saw him in Arizona.)But then one of yourbeliefs might fail to fit yourevidence (restrictedas above) even thoughit has warrant.Perhaps, or example,


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Cartesians vil demons-don't seem muchlike Gettier's originalexampleof theperson who lies to you about having a Ford, thus inducing in you the justifiedbelief thathe has a Ford,which belief turnsout, unbeknownst o him, to be true,so thatyourbelief is both justified and true.In those cases there is a sortof localhitchor glitch in the epistemicenvironment: he deceiver is himself deceived inan unexpectedway. Here we have a bit of retail lack of fit between epistemicenvironmentand your cognitive faculties; but in the brain in vat, insanity andevil demon examples we have wholesale epistemic failure. If these latterareGettierexamples,thenI suppose any examplethatshows evidentialfit orjustifi-cation insufficient for warrant will be a Gettier example. If so, then myexamples,I guess, are Gettierexamples;I don't want to argueaboutwhatconsti-tutes a Gettierexample, or try to give necessary and sufficient conditions forthem.(If I did, Gettierwouldprobably ind a counterexample )The real point lies in a different direction.I had thought that justificationiststhinkjustificationnecessaryand (with truebelief) nearly sufficient,so to speak,for warrant; he basic idea or basic picture is that knowledge is justified truebelief. True:this turnsoutnot to be exactly right;a codicil must be addedto takecare of annoying little counterexamplesof the type Gettierproposed;but themainstructure f knowledgeis given by justified true belief. Now the examplesIproposed were meant to show that this picture is deeply mistaken. It isn't thatjustificationis nearly sufficient for warrant,and needs only the addition of acomparativelyminorif hard to state fourthcondition;these examples show thatjustification(construed videntially) sn't anywherenearly sufficient for warrant.Consideragain the man in Pine Rest who thoughthe had discovered rotationalreproduction:he might very well be both deontologically and evidentiallyjustified;buthis beliefs don't come anywherenearhavingwarrant.But suppose the evidentialist retortsthat there are no near misses in logic:either a proposedanalysans is corrector it isn't; thereis no such thing as gettingit nearly right;all this talk about a basic pictureis just picturethinking;we'veknown for the last 30 years that we need a fourth condition; and fourthconditions can't be said to varyin size or significance.Then it seems to me thatthe evidentialist aces a dilemma.If we takethe notionof evidence narrowly,sothat it includes propositional evidence together with sensuous phenomenalevidence, but does not include nonsensuousphenomenalevidence (impulsionalevidence), then evidentialism doesn't give us even a necessary condition ofwarrant: or in many cases of warrantedbelief-many cases of memory and apriori belief, for example-there really isn't any significantsensuous phenom-enal evidence. Onthe otherhand,if you take evidencebroadly,so that t includesnonsensuous phenomenal evidence, then fitting your evidence is arguablynecessaryfor knowledge;but it adds nothing significantto the belief condition.You have impulsionalevidence for p just by virtue of believing p. It isn't evenclearly possible thatyou believe p but lack impulsionalevidence for it: could itbe thatyou believe p although t doesn't seem to you to be true?


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WHYWENEED PROPERFUNCTION 71If so, however, what the evidentialist really needs is not a fourth condition,but a third. For evidentialjustification (construed hus broadly) guaranteesonlybelief and a necessary accompanimentof belief: the nonsensuous phenomenalcounterpart f the belief, the sense that the propositionbelieved is indeedtrue.So the proposition hatS's belief that p fits S's evidence can be satisfiedby S'smerely believing p. Take evidence the narrowway, therefore: hen evidentialismmakes a contribution o the question of warrantby focusing our attentiononareas of the whole complex epistemic establishmentwhere indeed warrantandproperlyfunctioningfaculties do involve evidence of this type; taken this way,however, evidentialismgives us neithera necessarynor a sufficient conditionof

warrant.On the otherhand, take evidence the broaderway: then evidentialismstates a condition thatis necessaryfor knowledge,all right,butonly becausethisconditionis alreadyguaranteedby belief itself. The evidentialistcondition,takenthis way, addsnothingsignificant to truthand belief. So it isn't that the eviden-tialist is on the right track, giving us a third condition for knowledge, andconcedingthat he still needs a fourth;he doesn't give us a thirdcondition,sincewhathe gives us guaranteesno more thanis guaranteedby truthand belief (thefirst two conditions)alone.Similar remarksapply to Feldman's defense of deontologism:the idea thatepistemic dutyfulfillmentis necessary for warrant, ndtogetherwithtrue belief,nearly sufficient for it. Cases of massive malfunction-cases of madness,brainin vat cases, Cartesiandemon cases, and the like, show that duty fulfillment sn'tanywherenearlysufficient(togetherwithtruebelief) for warrant;t isn't even inthe right neighborhood.These cases show, I think, that justificationtaken thusdeontologically has little to do with warrant.You can be as justified as youplease, but still hold beliefs thatcome nowhere near having warrant. ndeed,inthis case things are even worse; it looks as if deontological justificationisn'teven necessary for warrant,as I argue in chapterII of Warrant:the CurrentDebate. What I take my examples to show isn't merely that deontologicaljustification isn't quite sufficient for warrant: what they show is thatdeontologicaljustificationreally doesn't help us understandwarrantat all. Thelesson they teach is that warrantand deontologicaljustificationare radicallydifferentproperties.4B. Feldman andProperFunctionalismI turn now to Feldman's discussion of 'proper unctionalism',my own proposal(I don't like the name, but can't think of a betterone.) His first criticismhas todo with mycriticism of Goldman'searlyreliabilism,according o which a beliefB is justified (has warrant)if it is produced by a reliable belief producingmechanism(the latter taken as type, not token); and B has a degree of justifi-cation proportional o the reliabilityof the mechanism.But of course any con-crete belief producingmechanism s a token of many types:which is the one thereliabilityof which determines he degreeof justificationenjoyed by the belief in


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question?FollowingFeldman's ead,5I said the reliabilistcan't find a type of theright generalityhere. Obviouslythe type in question must be so narrowthat allbeliefs producedby it have the samedegreeof justification(otherwisethe degreeof justificationwon't depend solely on the reliabilityof that type). But if youtake the relevant type that narrowly, you have such problems as that of theepistemically serendipitousesion.6Here Feldmansuggests thatI am too hasty: there may well be types thatwillyield the right result. By way of trivial example, he points out thatthe relevanttypecould be, for example,process producinga belief that has warrant.Clearly,all and only beliefs producedby processes that are tokens of this type will havewarrant.This seems right, buthow does it help the reliabilist?You mightas wellpropose an analysis of warrantn which the analysansis warrantedbelief.Secondly, he suggests that one can state a version of reliabilism which is"almostequivalent" o proper unctionalismby appropriatelyhoosing the typesinvolved: "One can say that the relevanttype of a process token includes all andonly processes governed by the same modulesin the truth-seekingportionof thedesign plan for the cognitive system."The idea, I gather, is this: the relevanttypes (call them 'Feldman ypes') will have as tokens certainconcreteprocesses(not process types): all those that are governed by a given truthseeking moduleof the design plan (orarepartof a given truthseeking facultyor subfacultyof thewhole cognitive establishment);and a belief B has warrant,on this form ofreliabilism, f andonly if it is producedby a mechanismfalling under a reliableFeldmantype. Says Feldman:"You thus get a specificationof reliabilismalmostequivalent o proper unctionalism.They swim, oras I see it, sinktogether."But this seems to me mistaken; he resulting version of reliabilism sn't any-where nearly equivalent to proper functionalism,and is (dare I say "conse-quently"?) subject to devastating counterexample.First, it isn't equivalent toproper functionalism: on this account but not on proper functionalism it isnecessary that (a) all the beliefs that are outputsof processes falling under aFeldman type have the same degree of warrant,and (b) all the beliefs in theoutputof processes falling under a reliable Feldmantype have warrant.Neitherof these is a consequenceof my view, and neitheris in fact necessary. On myview beliefs producedby the same module may have varying degrees of warrant,andwill have varying degreesof warrantf they are held with varyingdegreesofstrength.As for (b), note that a Feldmantype is a type all of whose tokens aregoverned by a given module of the design plan.Now suppose,for concreteness,that vision is such a module. Supposefurthermore ision is a reliabletype:mostof the processes it governs (in fact, and perhapsalso in appropriatelynearbypossible worlds) producetrue beliefs. Then the conditions for warrant pecifiedby Feldman'sversion of reliabilismare met: this version entails thatif vision is areliable Feldmantype, then (necessarily) every belief produced by vision haswarrant.But this is not a consequence of proper functionalism and is falsebesides. Due to an excess of vodka, my vision malfunctions:the malfunctioncauses me to believe I see pinkratscrawlingover my bed. Surelythis belief has


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WHYWENEED PROPERFUNCTION 73little or no warrant, ven thoughit is producedby a facultyor mechanism allingundera reliableFeldmantype. So this version of reliabilism s not equivalenttoproper unctionalism; urthermoret is wholly inadequate ust because it fails toinclude the conditionrequiringproper unction.One final pointin this neighborhood: ccording o Feldman, here s somethinglike a generality problem for proper functionalism,as well as for classicalreliabilism. 'm sorryto say I don't really see what the problem s. (Inparticulardon't know why Feldmanasks (p. 43), "Whatcounts as the same circumstancesanyway?")Part of thealleged problemseems to be that t isn't clear how to applyproper unctionalismn a specificcase-the case, say, of Feldman'sbelief, thathesees a large numberof people. But what, exactly, is the problem?This belief ofhis haswarrant,o I say, if and only if it is produced n himby cognitivefacultiesfunctioning properlyin an appropriate nvironmentaccordingto a design plansuccessfully aimed at truth. So are the cognitive faculties involved in theproductionof Feldman'sbelief functioningproperlyand aimed at truth? shouldthinkso. Is the cognitive environmentappropriateor his kind of cognitive sys-tems?It certainlyseems so. And is there a high objective probability hat a beliefproduced by these faculties (the ones involved in the productionof Feldman'sbelief) functioningproperly n an appropriate ognitiveenvironmentwill be true?I see no reason to doubt it. So I don't thinkI see the problemhere. Is it perhapsthatin manycases we don't reallyknow what the modules involved are? This iscertainlytrue;but my claim is only thatour conceptof warrant s such thatif abeliefhaswarrant,he moduleor modulesproducing t is (are)reliable.Inorder oevaluate this claim, we do not need to know just what modules our cognitiveestablishmentdoes indeed contain,or which are operative in a given circum-stance.In the same way, we often can't tell whethersomeone's belief is justified(deontologically, et's say) or whether t fits his evidence; this isn't much of anobjection o analysesof warrantn termsof justificationorfittingthe evidence.I turn finally to what Feldmancalls his 'basic andcentralobjection':this toohas two parts. According to the first part, as I understand t, properfunctiondoesn't do any work:we candojust as well withreliabilityalone,leaving properfunctionout altogether:

The discussion of the currentsection has been designed to supportthe idea that itwould have been better(or just as good) to add only the reliabilityrequirement ndforget about the proper function requirement.As far as I can tell, there are noexamples that demonstrate the need to add this requirement to the reliabilityrequirement p. 47).

If what Feldman says here is true, then my view really reduces to a form ofreliabilism-a ratherbaroqueandunlovely form with an extraneousand whollypointlesscurlicuein the form of the proper unctionrequirement.But is what hesays true? I think not. Reliability isn't anywhere nearly enough to guaranteewarrant,andthe deficiency, so far as I can see, is madeup by adding the proper


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functionrequirement. upposeonce more that vision-the whole complex powerwhereby one comes to have visual beliefs-is a cognitive facultyand a moduleof the design plan. Suppose furthermore,my vision is reliable: n this and appro-priatelynearbypossible worlds,the beliefs it producesarefor the most parttrue.Does it follow that all the beliefs producedby my vision have warrant?Of coursenot; perhaps occasionally this faculty malfunctions.Perhaps I get drunk again(above, p. 72) andsee more pink rats.The belief that I see pink ratswill then beproducedby a reliable faculty;this belief may still be wholly without warrant,because on thisoccasion of its operation,my vision is malfunctioning.Of course therewill be a thousandsimilar examples. I ordinarilyknow whatcity I am in; if I get the measles and a really high fever, however, the faculty orprocess that produces such beliefs may malfunction and produce an absurdlyfalse belief-a belief with no warrant; hat will be because the faculty thatproduces t, while reliable, on this occasion malfunctions.A friend of mine wasrecently hit hardby a bear; he ordinarilyrememberswhatblood pressuremedi-cation he takes, but on this occasion, when the medic asked him, he gave thewrong answer. His belief on this occasion was produced by a reliable beliefproducing acultyor poweror mechanism(his memory);due to the stress of theoccasion, however,his memorywasn'tfunctioningproperlyon this occasion andthe belief producedhad littleby way of warrant.Don't we see in these and otherexamples the need for the additionof the properfunction requirement o thereliabilityrequirement?7Now consider the other partof Feldman's centralobjection, the claim thatproper function isn't necessary for warrant:you can have warrantand knowl-edge, he says, even whereyou don't have proper unction.There are really twoquitedifferentkinds of cases here,but since I amrunningout of time I shall dealwith only one. Considertheremarkable winsFeldman(following OliverSacks)speaksof: althoughthey were retardedand cognitively damagedin some ways,they could also performmarvellous eats of cognition. Not only could they 'justsee' that there were 111 matches on the floor withoutcounting them; they couldalso just see, so it seems, whethera given 6 and even 8 digit number s a prime.That is no mean feat. (Perhapswe could call them the marvellousprime twins.)And Feldman's claim is this: the twins' cognitive facultiesare clearly malfunc-tioning,in producing hebelief, e.g., that 111matchesfell out of the box, but thatbelief nonetheless has warrant or them: "It seems clear that they know howmany matches thereare,but they aren'tdesigned to know that. It's a departurefrom the design plan that enables them to know" (p. 49).This is an extremely interestingexample, and thereis much to say aboutit; Idon't have the time to say nearlyall that should be said. But let me say just thismuch. First, it isn't clear that they do know the propositions in question.Consider heirbeing able to tell (so it seems) thatn is a prime,for some largen.Accordi-c to Sacks, the twins don't seem to have the conceptof multiplication;it is thereforenot at all clearthatthey can formthebelief n is prime, for some six


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digit n, or indeed for any n at all. Due in part to the serious damage to theircognitive faculties, one doesn't know enough about what they actually believe,what beliefs they can andcannot form, to be surepreciselywhat beliefs they doand do not have. There is less uncertainty n the case of theirbeing able to tellthat 111 matchesfell out of the box; even here, however, there is some residualuncertainty:do they really know what it is for there to be 111 of somethingiftheydon't have the conceptof multiplication?It isn't quite clear, therefore, hat these twins have the relevant beliefs; but itis much more doubtful,I think,that their faculties really are malfunctioning nproducingthese beliefs. Their faculties obviously seem to malfunction n someways; but how do we know that they are malfunctioning n producing he beliefthat there are 111 matches on the floor? Mozart(and perhapsa few others) couldhear in his mind's ear a complex piece of music in complete detail and then justwrite it down; the rest of us can't; must we conclude that Mozart's cognitivefaculties were malfunctioning thatthere was a departure rom his design plan)when he did this? There is no need to draw that churlish conclusion; anotherperfectly possible view is that he had cognitive powers most of the rest of uslack, and hence a slightly (or more than slightly) differentdesign plan. Perhapsthese twins and a few others can performmarvellous feats of calculation andcognition:mustwe concludethattheir facultiesaremalfunctioning n producingthese beliefs? Again: there is no need to draw this conclusion. Their facultiescertainlymalfunction n some ways; but why insist thatthey aremalfunctioningin producing hese specific beliefs? Indeed, suppose you knew these twins, spokewith them often, tried to understand hem and how theircognitive faculties work,witnessed a hundred imes the fact that they can apparentlyust see that therearen matches on the floor for large n, withoutcounting them as you and I wouldhave to do. Would you takeit for granted hat theirfacultiesweremalfunctioningin producing hese beliefs? I doubt it. I certainlywouldn't. Supposethatone ofthem contractsa seriousdisease;his temperature oes up to 107 degrees; uponrecoveringfromthe fever he thinks he can still see how manymatches thereare,but most of the time comes up with a totally wrong answer. (Sometimes, whenthereare 111matchesthere,he says there are 15,but othertimes he gets it right.)Then you would be inclined to think this mysterious power of his has beendamaged;some faculty or power he has now malfunctionspartof the time. Atleastthatwouldbe my inclination.How could it be that the twins' faculties(andMozart's)are workingproperlywhen they are workingso differently rom our own? Well, we aren'tjust giventhatall humanbeingshaveexactlythe samedesign plan.We aren't ust given thatthe twins don't have a design plan slightlydifferent rom ours:perhapsGod hasgiven thema design plana bit different rom the one we have. We also aren't ustgiven this if we think thereis no God; new design plansobviously arisein someway or other(perhapsby virtueof some of the mechanismsappealed o in currentevolutionary heory),and we can account or this case as we do for those.8


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II. SosaI turn now to Ernest Sosa's typically interestingand graciouspaper. First, he isquite rightwhenhe pointsouton page 52 that the reason the serendipitous umor(or lesion) example does not afflict my view is that a personwho suffers fromthe tumor s suchthat hercognitive faculties are not functioningproperly, .e., inaccordwith herdesign plan.She is subject o malfunction,disease, dysfunction.A. Sosa's CounterexamplesSuppose we consider Sosa's Swampmanand Swampbabyexamples, the adultversion of which he borrows from Donald Davidson. According to this exam-ple, Davidson is standing in a swamp; lightning strikesa dead tree near him;his body is vaporized. By the merest chance or coincidence, the tree is turnedinto a molecule by molecule physical replica of Davidson; the replica swimsback to Davidson's house and takes up work on an article on radicalinterpretationwhere Davidson left off. (And Feldmanthinksmy examples areweird ) Sosa proposes that this replica would have beliefs, and would indeedhave knowledge; its beliefs would have warrant. If so, however, properfunctionalism must be false: since he has no design plan, the Swampman'sfaculties would not function eitherproperlyor improperly.Sosa suggests that I would reply to this counterexampleas I replied to asimilarexample suggested by JamesTaylor: t isn't at all clearlypossible, in thebroadly ogical sense, I said, that a being capableof belief shouldsuddenly popinto existencejust by chance or coincidence.9Sosa thenpoints out that this isn'tclearly impossible either,andmakesa very interestingproposal.SupposeA is ananalysis of some concept or propertyP: A, of course, is successful only if itstates(broadly ogically) necessaryand sufficientconditions of P. AccordingtoSosa, therecan be two kinds of counterexamples o A. First, there are refutingcounterexamples; uch a counterexamplepresentsa state of affairs S meetingtwo conditions:(a) S is clearly possible, and (b) the analysans holds and theanalysandumdoesn't hold (or vice versa) in S, so thatanalysans and analysan-dum are not equivalentin the broadly logical sense. But second, there are alsoopposing counterexamples.An opposing counterexample presents a state ofaffairsS which isn't clearlypossible but also isn't clearly impossible,andis suchthatif it is possible,thenclearly the analysansand the analysandumdo not bothhold in it. And thenSosa claims that

Whilea refutingounterexampleonstitutes particularlyesoundingefeat oraphilosophical hesis, a merely opposing counterexample lso does epistemicdamage, he extentof the damagebeing proportionalo thedegreeto which itseemsplausiblehat heexamples reallypossible p. 55).Now something ike whatSosa says seems to me to be true;as it stands,how-ever, I am inclined to doubtthat whathe says is true.(Perhaps t is a sort of firstapproximation.)This is because it suggeststhatevery opposingcounterexample


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WHYWENEEDPROPERFUNCTION 77(thekind whereit isn't clear thatthe exampleis impossible)does some epistemicdamage to the proposed philosophical thesis. This seems to me mistaken. Itmight be that the example isn't clearly impossible,but only because it is verycomplicated:one knows that even if the examplewere impossible,it wouldn't beclearly impossible,just because it is too close to the limit of our capacitiesfordetectingthe impossible. (Here it is important o distinguishbetween failing tosee that S is impossibleandseeing that S is possible.)In othercases we have thesame pattern,butnot due to complication.A theist believes thatit is impossiblethat any substanceother than God continue to exist without God's supportingandconservingactivity;she shouldn'tbe impressedby the suggestionthatit isn'tclearly impossible that there be a substance hatcontinuesto exist apart rom thesupportingactivityof God. Here the problem sn't complication,butjust the factthat this state of affairs'not seeming clearly impossible to us isn't muchby wayof evidence for the claim that it is indeed possible. A certainsortof materialistthinkspainjust is a kind of neuralevent; shouldhe be impressedby the sugges-tion that it doesn't seem clearly impossible thatthere be pain in the absence ofthatkind of neuralevent?I don't thinkso, and for the same reason:heretoo thefact that the envisaged state of affairs is not clearly impossible is not a goodreason forthinking t possible.And of coursethe samegoes for counterexampleso analyses. You presentananalysis;I outlinea a state of affairswhich is neitherclearly possible norclearlyimpossible, but is such thatif it is possible, then it is clearly a counterexample.This doesn't necessarily damage your analysis: everything depends upon thenature of my example. We have a damagingcounterexampleonly if we havereasonor it seems plausible to supposethat we do see, even if only in an indis-tinct sort of way, that S is possible, ratherthan merely failing to see that S isimpossible.My truthfullyreporting"I can't see why thatcouldn't be" doesn'tshow much.I can't see why therecouldn't be gold with an atomicweightof 14;nothingmuch follows. In some cases our failing to see thatsomethingcouldn'tbe true is a good reason for thinking hat it could be true(cases where,if the stateof affairs were impossible,we would be able to see that it is), but in othersitisn't. To makeSosa's principlework,we mustdistinguish hese cases.Accordingly, suppose we return to Swampman.What we have here is amoleculeby moleculereplicaof Davidson:furthermorehis thing behavesjust aswe should expect Davidson (or his body) to behave. Many would take it forgranted hat it is necessarythata dopplegdngerof Davidson or his body wouldhave beliefs if and only if Davidson did. But is this reallyobvious? No. It couldbe, so far as obviousnessgoes, thatCartesiandualism is true;perhapswhat wehave here is a duplicate of Davidson's body, but no correspondingmind; soperhapsno beliefs of any sort at all areassociatedwith thisduplicate.Does thatdoepistemicdamage o the aboveassumption?Not as it stands.All depends,here,onwhetherwhatwe have is a case of seeing, perhapsdimly, that it is possiblethatDavidsonand his dopplegangerdifferwith respectto belief, or merely a case offailingto see thatthis is impossible.(Endof methodologicaldigression.)


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Now Sosa reportsthathe is "strongly nclined to believe that Swampman slogically and metaphysicallypossible". He is also inclined to think, apparently,that if there were such a thing as Swampman, it would have beliefs some ofwhich could have warrantfor it. But is this incompatiblewith proper func-tionalism?Not obviously.The problem s supposed to be thatSwampmanarisesjust by chance; perhapswe can imagine God permittinga junior angel of somesort to play an elaborategame of chancewhich somehow resultsin the new formtaken by the matter rom the destroyedtree. So this duplicateof Davidson isn'tdesigned by anything-not by God, but also not by thejunior angel or evolution.It just shows up by chance. As I say, I am inclined to doubtthat this is possible.But if it is possible, why isn't it equally possible that the being in questionpop into existenceby chancecomplete witha design plan? The notionsof designplan and proper unction are correlative:a thing is working properly, n doing Ain circumstancesC, if and only if its design plan calls for it to do A in C. If abeing capableof having beliefs can just pop into existence by chance,couldn'tthe same be said for a being thatis capable both of belief and also of functioningproperly or improperly? (Couldn't Swampman suffer a heart attack due tooverexertion from all that swimming? If he didn't, might not his heartmalfunction?)Sosa says (p. 57) that "If a 'design plan' might fall into placeindependentlyof any sort of conscious or unconscious design, then I lose mygrip on the meaning of the locution 'design plan'." I'm not sure I see theproblem.It is at best dubious that a being capable of belief could just pop intoexistence by chance;but if that is possible, couldn't the being functionwell orill? Couldn't Swampmanget sick or drunk?When Swampbabygrows up, can'tshe get sick, ordrunk,or injured?We wouldcertainly hink(and say) so.

B. Sosa's VirtueEpistemologyI turn inally to what Sosa sees as successful alternatives o proper unctionalism;andof courseI don't have nearly enough spaceto dojustice to Sosa's thoughtfulsuggestions.The firstis(W) My belief B is warrantedonly if it is produced in me by a faculty F in acognitive environmentsuch thatF is working properlywith respectto the goal oftruthacquisitionanderroravoidancein environmentE (p. 58).

Here 'working properly'with respectto a goal', says Sosa, means no more thanworking n such a way as to promoteor producethatgoal. This accountis there-fore simplerand less elaboratethanmy account,with its more robust sense of'workingproperly':Why move from simply requiring hat a belief must be causedby a reliablefacultyif it is to have warrant o requiringmoreelaboratelythatthe belief must be causedby a faculty that is not only reliable but is functioningproperly n some sense thatinvolves design by conscious agentor impersonalprocess?(p. 58).


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WHYWENEED PROPERFUNCTION 79I have two commentson (W). First,a commentthatappliesnot only to (W) but

to all of Sosa's suggestions; his is my most importantpoint here. Sosa proposesthata warranted elief must be producedby afaculty;his reason s the following:Against examples like that of the brain esion, one can now argue that they involvebelief-producingprocesses, but nothing that could properlybe called a "faculty."And we can leave for later work the problem of how to define the concept of afaculty (p. 58).

So the idea is that a belief is warranted nly if it is producedby a faculty,and abrain esion isn't a faculty.This seems right;but the problemfor Sosa, I think, isthat the notion of a faculty involves the notion of proper function. A faculty orpower-perception, or memory,or reason in the narrowsense, or digestion,orone's abilityto walk-is precisely the sort of thing that can functionproperlyorimproperly.Indeed, this is just the difference between the brain lesion and afaculty:the concepts of properand improper unction don't apply to the brainlesion. It isn't functioningeitherproperlyor improperlyn producing he belief itdoes: it isn't that sort of thing.And of course this notion of proper unction can'tbe explained ust in terms of producingmainlytrue beliefs: the brain esion, afterall, may do that.(Maybeit causes only one belief: thatyou have a brain esion.)Whatis involved here is preciselythatmorerobustnotionof proper unctionthat(W) is designed to avoid. So we don't really avoid that notion in (W); wesmuggle it in in thevery notion of a faculty.Second comment:If a belief is true, and is producedby a faculty,then isn'tthatfaculty working properlywith respectto the goal of truthacquisition? f so,however, it looks as if every true belief producedby a faculty has warrant, venif the facultyis malfunctioning n the old sense, the ordinary ense, in producingthatbelief; and thatseems wrong.You get drunk; ome of yourbelief producingfaculties malfunction;one of the beliefs producedby these temporarilydysfunc-tional facultieshappensto be true:they misfire in such a way as to produceinyou, atrandom, he truebelief thatthePope is atpresent n Barcelona.Thatbelief,I would say, doesn't have warrant or you, even if as a matterof fact the Popedoes happen o be in Barcelona. W)as it stands, hereforewon't do thejob.We might tryto mendmattersby denyingthat

Belief B is trueis sufficient for

the faculty that producedB was functioning properlywith respect to the goal oftruthacquisition n producingB;we say instead thata faculty is working properlywith respectto thatgoal if andonly if most of the beliefs it produces,or some sufficiently high percentage,are


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80 NOUS

true.But no hope. For then a facultycould be working properlywith respecttotruthacquisitioneven if in one smallishareaof its operation t malfunctioned inthe old sense) and producedabsurdlyfalse beliefs. I get drunk and hallucinateagain: if my perceptual aculties producetruth in the vast majorityof cases (Ihallucinate only twice in my whole life) then on this revised account myhallucinatory elief has warrant or me. But clearlyit doesn't. So the firstsimpleaccountdoesn't seem to me to work.It isn't clear how serious Sosa is about (W); I believe, however that he iscompletelyseriousabout

VI For any world w, a belief B is justified l in w if andonly if B derives in w fromthe exercise of one or.more intellectualvirtues thatin w virtuouslyproducea highratio of truebeliefs (p. 61).

VI speaksnot of warrantbutof justification;but according o Sosa it gives us "atleasta partialaccountof 'justification' orof somethingclose to warrant, erhaps,or of aptness),one which offers an alternative o proper unctionalism..."p. 62).But whatis an intellectualvirtue?Sosa doesn'texplicitlysay; so faras I can tell,however,a virtue s a reliablebelief-producingfacultylla facultythatproducesahigh ratio of true beliefs in the appropriate nvironment.VI thereforehas thecrucialproblemof (W);it presupposes he notionof proper unction n the robustsense andthereforedoesnot offerus analternativeo proper unctionalism.There are furtherproblemswith VI. For example (as Sosa recognizes) if abelief is to be justified or warranted, hen the faculty thatproducesit must beworking properlyon the occasion of its production. Of course Sosa hopes toavoidappealto the notion of proper unction;he thereforesuggests that"henceitmustbe that in the circumstancesone would (most likely) believe P iff P werethe case-i.e., one (at least probabilistically)racksthe truth... (p. 62). So thistrackingrequirement s to do the work of the properfunctioningrequirement.Butthe trackingrequirement, think, s too strong.Considermy belief that

(1) I am not a brainin a vat on Alpha Centauri,serving as a subjectin anexperiment n which the experimentersgive me the very experiences andbeliefs I do in facthavejust now.

This doesn't satisfySosa's trackingrequirement:t is not the case thatprobably,if it were false I would not believe it.1 (If it were false, I wouldbelieve it, sinceit is one of the beliefs I do in fact have just now.) But couldn't this belief havewarrantorme? Note also thatwhile (1) doesn'tmeet thetrackingrequirement,

(2) I am at home in Indiana and I am not a brain in a vat on AlphaCentauri, ervingas a subjectin an experiment n which the experimentersgive me the very experiencesandbeliefs I do in facthavejust now


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WHYWENEED PROPERFUNCTION 81does. (If (2) were false, it wouldbe because of the falsehood of its first conjunct,in which case I would not believe that conjunctor the whole proposition.)Can aview be right if it implies that I can know (2) but cannot know (1)?12On the other hand, the trackingrequirement s also too weak. Suppose weaccept the usual semantics for counterfactuals: hen any belief in a necessaryproposition will automaticallysatisfy the tracking requirement.13Hence anybelief of mine in what is in facta necessary ruthwill meet this condition-even ifI acquire the belief by virtue of getting drunk, so that my reason temporarilymalfunctions.So any such belief (provided t meets the otherconditionsSosa setsfor warrant)would have warrant or me. But thatcan't be right.Sosa adds a couple of further onditions:

If a faculty operates to give one a belief, and thereby a piece of directknowledge,one must have some awareness of one's belief and its source, and of the virtueofthat source both in generaland in the specific instance... . And, finally, one mustgrasp thatone's belief non-accidentallyreflects the truthof P through he exerciseof such a virtue. This account therefore combines requirementsof tracking andnonaccidentality,of reliable virtues orfaculties, and of epistemicperspective.

These furtherconditions,however,also seem too strong, f taken as conditionsofwarrant enerally.This is another ndicationof the complexityand articulation four design plan;the conditionsSosa mentionsmay well be required or certainkinds of knowledge-perhaps for whollymatureand self-consciousknowledge-but they don't seem to be generallynecessary.A 10-year-oldboy, for example,may know what his name is, even though he does not have awareness of thevirtue of the sourceof this belief, both in generaland in the specific instanceinquestion.A personcould know a proposition,I should think,even if she didn'thave any idea at all as to the source of the belief:perhapsall she can say is thatitjust popped into her head. And one can certainlyknow a propositionwithoutgrasping believing ?) that the belief in questionnon-accidentally eflects the truthof thatproposition;many people, I shouldthink,know much withouteven havingtheconceptof non-accidentally eflecting he truth.There are problems,therefore,for Sosa's virtueepistemology. I am gratifiedto see, however,that insofaras anepistemicvirtueis anepistemicfaculty,Sosa'svirtueepistemology is really a variety of properfunctionalism.So I suggest inconclusion:we need the notion of proper unctionin orderto give an account ofwarrant;here seems to be no way to do without t.14

NotesIRichardFeldmanand Earl Conee, "Evidentialism", hilosophical Studies48, pp. 15 ff.2Perhapsotherconditions should be added;I don't have the space here to go into the matter.31 don't have the space to explain this in properdetail: see pp. 57ff. of Warrantand ProperFunction.


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82 NOUS4See my "Justificationn the TwentiethCentury",Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch,vol. L, Supplement,Fall, 1990.5Seehis "ReliabilityandJustification",TheMonist 68, pp. 159 ff.6"There s a rare but specific sort of brain lesion (we may suppose) which is always associatedwith a numberof cognitive processes of the relevant degree of specificity, most of which cause itsvictim to hold absurdly alse beliefs. One of the associated processes, however, causes the victim tobelieve that he has a brain lesion. Suppose, then, that S suffers from this sort of disorder andaccordingly believes that he suffers from a brain lesion. Add that he has no evidence at all for thisbelief: no symptoms of which he is aware, no testimony on the part of doctors or other expertwitnesses, nothing. (Add, if you like, that he has much evidence against it; but then add also that themalfunction nduced by the lesion makes it impossible for him to take appropriate ccount of thisevidence.) Then the relevanttype (while it may be hardto specify in detail) will certainly be highlyreliable;but the resulting belief-that he has a brain lesion-will have little by way of warrant orS."Warrant: he CurrentDebate, P. 199.7We might suggest that what the reliability condition requires s that the faculty in question be

functioningreliably on this very occasion. This raises a host of problems,however, problemsI don'thave the space to investigate properlyhere. But just to point to their general location: first, we mustsay that a faculty can be functioningreliably even when it producesfalse beliefs; else we shall haveto hold that no false beliefs have warrant.But can a faculty be functioning reliably on an occasionwhen it producesa false belief? And secondly, to avoid supposing that all true beliefs have warrant,we shall have to say that a faculty or power can be functioning unreliablyon an occasion when itproduces a true belief. How will this go? Perhapswe shall say that a faculty is functioning reliably,on a given occasion, only if it producestrue beliefs in the appropriately earbypossible worlds.Butthenwe face once more theproblemof theepistemically serendipitous esion.81n footnote 5, Feldman suggests that "if the abnormality s the resultof a lesion or radiation, tis difficult to understand he sense in which it is partof their design." Butof course we aren'tgiventhat the unusualpowers of these twins are the resultof lesion or radiation.He also suggests thatif

we thinkMozartandthe twins have a slightly different design plan, then we must say the same forcases of cognitive defect: "Moreover f these cognitive abnormalitieswhich are (in some respects)advantageousare held to be partof the design, thencomparablycaused defects should also be heldto be partof the design. In thatcase, manyof the examples Plantingauses againstother theories willapply equally to his own." But I fail to feel the force of this consideration.Can't it be that somedeviations from the usual are by way of powers most of us don't have, while othersare by way ofmalfunction?There is much more to be said aboutexamplesof this kind.In some cases of this kind,a certainmax plan gets adopted as a design plan (see "Warrantand Designing Agents: Reply to Taylor"PhilosophicalStudies 64 (1991) p. 209); In othercases whatwe have is an analogicalextension ofthe centralnotion of properfunctionand thusof the central notion of warrant Warrantand ProperFunction (Hasker)).9See"Warrant ndDesigning Agents: Reply to Taylor"p. 206.'0Seep. 61. If an intellectualvirtue were not a facultybut insteadany belief producingprocess,then of course the epistemically serendipitous esion would once more rear ts ugly head."ISeeRobertNozick, Philosophical Explanations(Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press, 1981),p. 203.12Seemy "Positive Epistemic Status and ProperFunction in Philosophical Perspectives 2,Epistemology,1988, ed. James Tomberlin Atascadero:Ridgeview PublishingCo., 1988).'3According o the usual semantics,a counterfactualwith true antecedentandconsequent s true;hence if p is necessaryand I believe it, the first half of the trackingrequirements satisfied.Further,accordingto the usualsemantics,if p is necessarily true,then (trivially) any counterfactualwith itsdenial as antecedent s true;so the second half of the trackingrequirements also satisfied.14One inal point: a belief has warrant,on my account, only if the module of the design plan

governingits production s aimedat truthandonly if thatdesign plan is a good design plan.I wenton to explain the goodness of a design plan in termsof the objective probabilityof a beliefs beingtrue, given that it was produced by faculties functioning accordingto thatdesign plan in the rightsort of environmentand given that the modules of the design plan governing its productionareaimed at truth. Some of the things Feldman and Sosa say suggest that this reliabilitycondition isreally only a first approximation; erhapsthere is more to goodness of design plan, in this context,thanreliability.Perhaps hey areright; f so, that would be a projectfor furtherwork.

why we need proper function alvin plantinga

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