Plantinga’s Interpretation of Epistemological Deontologism

Ewa Odoj

doi:10.18290/rf2204.16

Ewa Odoj John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0821-9317

Keywords: justification, epistemological deontologism, epistemic duty, doxastic voluntarism

Abstract

Alvin Plantinga challenges the rooted tradition of thinking about justification as the subject’s fulfillment of his or her epistemic duty. I try to show that, in several respects, Plantinga misinterprets the idea of epistemic duties and that, consequently, his argument against deontologism is not sound. I begin by summarizing Plantinga’s understanding of epistemological deontologism and then offer my own critique of this interpretation, which focuses on five issues: the problem of recognizability of epistemic duty, describing epistemic duty as subjective, Plantinga’s assumption of the principle of obviousness, the understanding of justification as absence of guilt, and the issue of doxastic voluntarism.

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