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Warrant: The Current Debate

Warrant: The Current Debate

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Valuable reference with a lot of caveats
Review: This book suffers from poor organization. For example, chapters 6 and 7 both deal with what Plantinga calls "Bayesian coherentism," as a theory of warrant, but it doesn't seem to me that there is such a thing. He creates a hypothetical theory of warrant out of a theory of probability associated with the 17th century clergyman Thomas Bayes. Then he spends two chapters discussing a variety of problems some of them associated with real life Bayesians (arguing over matters other than warrant) and others associated with his hypothetical Bayesianism.

Still, those who want a summary of a good part of the contemporary debate over epistemological questions will find it here, and you can use the footnotes to find other works in which to study the matters discussed with more depth.

I especially appreciatd the discussion of Laurence BonJour's version of coherentism. Plantinga finds BonJour's copmments on probability "thoroughly obscure....That precisely THAT mosquito should bite you precisely when and where it does, that on your cross-country trip on December 23 ar 4:13 PM you should be precisely where you are at that time, that there should be precisely the number of blades in your backyard that in fact adorn it...either these things are all improbable in the relevant sense or else I have no idea what that relevant sense might be."

A good point, that, and well expressed. Perhaps it was BonJour's problems with probability that stimulated the digression on Bayesianism.


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