Konditionale Argumentation in Plantingas Religionsphilosophie

Abstract

With assumptions and hypotheses alone there is almost no knowledge to gain. However, Alvin Plantinga establishes the parity between religious and common propositions as well as his whole religious epistemology on a conditional. Therefore, it seems to be about time to reassess the significance of conditionals and reconsider their constraints in argumentation. Based on his warrant theory, Plantinga propagates parity between common scientific and religious propositions: By virtue of properly functioning cognitive faculties true propositions will be produced. Highlighting the fact, that cognitive faculties constitute the functional centre for the production and justification of both religious and common propositions, this paper will establish to what extent the parity can be maintained if the argumentation theory is applied to the status of the cognitive faculties in Plantinga's warrant theory. The assertion of the existence of cognitive faculties for the production of religious propositions is founded by a conditional expression and hypothesis. By way of a perspective from argumentation theory about conditionals, the paper concludes that on one hand in Plantinga's general warrant theory the parity between common and religious propositions cannot be sustained and on the other hand that the part of the warrant theory which deals with philosophy of religion can be considered as unusable for real knowledge.