Warrant and religious belief › What warrant adds to true belief

Plantinga uses warrant for the further quality or quantity that, in sufficient degree, distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief. The definition names what needs explaining. It does not imply that a belief acquires warrant simply because the person considers it important or sincere.

Suppose, as an illustration, that a person guesses tomorrow's weather by choosing the forecast she would most enjoy. If the weather matches her guess, truth alone does not turn the guess into knowledge. We would still ask how she arrived at it. Plantinga's account directs attention to the process that produced the belief and the circumstances in which it operated.

His initial account has several connected requirements. The relevant cognitive faculties must function properly. They must operate in an environment appropriate to them. The portion of the cognitive design plan responsible for the belief must aim at truth, and it must be successfully directed toward truth rather than simply producing comforting or useful beliefs.

These requirements distinguish different failures. A normally reliable perceptual capacity might malfunction. It might work as designed while encountering an environment that defeats its operation. Or a mechanism could fulfill a function whose aim is reassurance rather than truth. A belief's psychological usefulness would not by itself supply the warrant Plantinga is describing.

The book does not present these broad conditions as an exceptionless four-item checklist that settles every case. In chapter 5, Plantinga discusses accidentally true beliefs that require further attention to the particular cognitive situation. His distinction between larger environments and more specific settings is intended to refine the account. An explanation of warrant must address the circumstances of the actual exercise of a capacity, not merely its general reliability.

This is one reason to distinguish warrant from truth. The theory concerns a belief's epistemic quality and its degree. Knowledge additionally requires truth and sufficient warrant. Calling a false belief false does not, by itself, describe every feature of the process that generated it. Nor does a warranted process guarantee that every output is knowledge regardless of circumstances.