A flaw in the Stich–Plantinga challenge to evolutionary reliabilism

Analysis 78 (2):216-225 (2018)
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Abstract

Evolutionary reliabilism is the view that natural selection likely favoured reliable cognitive faculties in humans. While ER enjoys some plausibility, Stephen Stich and Alvin Plantinga have presented well-known challenges to the view. Their arguments rely on a common premiss; namely, that natural selection is indifferent to truth. This article shows that this premiss is both imprecise and too weak to support their conclusions and, therefore, that their challenges to ER fail.

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Michael J. Deem
University of Pittsburgh

Citations of this work

EVAAN: An empirical verification argument against naturalism.Ward Blondé - 2023 - Logos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 56 (2):345-362.

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References found in this work

Ontological relativity and other essays.Willard Van Orman Quine (ed.) - 1969 - New York: Columbia University Press.
The Foundations of Statistics.Leonard J. Savage - 1954 - Wiley Publications in Statistics.
Accuracy and the Laws of Credence.Richard Pettigrew - 2016 - New York, NY.: Oxford University Press UK.
Ontological relativity.W. V. O. Quine - 1968 - Journal of Philosophy 65 (7):185-212.

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