After Gettier came Plantinga.In this essay I explore the concepts of justification and warrant. Are they just two words with the same meaning? Starting with Edmund Gettier’s famous 1963 paper Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? as a backdrop, I investigate Alvin Plantinga’s Proper Functionalism, his analysis of warrant, that property enough of which turns mere true belief into knowledge. Then we put Plantinga’s proper functionalism to the test with challenges from a selection of essays from philosophers critical to Plantinga’s views on warrant. We end up in a summary, where I defend the thesis that Plantinga’s proper functionalism has deepened our understanding of warrant to the point that we can say that it is the best starting point when investigating what warrant is, and how it thus helps us in our understanding what constitutes knowledge. The question of whether Plantinga’s account of warrant can be said to be a solution of Gettier cases will depend on our willingness to allow some vagueness in Plantinga’s definition of the cognitive ”mini environment”. Otherwise, a reductive analysis of knowledge and its parts seem doomed. In the end I give a slightly adjusted revision or addendum of proper functionalism, adding what I call the elements of recognition and surprise in being prepared for truth’s either validating or refuting my belief. I also shortly, in a postscript, discuss possible ways forward for those who want to explore more about Plantinga’s design plan condition, whether it should be interpreted in a theistic or naturalistic framework.

The subject of this essay is the concept of omnisubjectivity, which is a form of omniscience introduced by Linda Zagzebski. I will analyse the concept in detail, its possible implications, objections and further developments and critically examine these.      Omnisubjectivity is the idea that God has constant access to our consciousness and all our mental states and that God can grasp all conscious creatures’ first-person perspectives at the same time as God has his own first- and third-person perspective. As a model for this Zagzebski uses human empathy, where she means that God has perfect total empathy which implies that God has constant access to all our mental states at the same time as God never forgets that those mental states aren’t God’s own.      Some of the possible implications that I bring up in this essay are that omnisubjectivity can explain how God hears prayers, how God’s love and providence can deepen, how God might or might not be affected by humans’ mental states, especially their failings and immoral actions and thoughts, and how God’s judgement can be perfectly fair. The objections concern Zagzebski’s use of empathy as a model for omnisubjectivity, the definition of perfection, God’s relation to time and what the first-person perspective contributes to. The developments concern Thomas Aquinas thought of God as everything’s first cause and christology.      This essay’s conclusion is that omnisubjectivity is, to a large extent, already a part of omniscience, but that it also contributes with new aspects and opens up for new questions and deepens the meaning of omniscience and God’s relation to his created creatures.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity International University, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-110).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity International University, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-110).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity International University, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-110).