Properly Basic Belief

A Properly Basic Belief is a belief that is rationally held without being inferred from other beliefs. The standard examples are perceptual beliefs (“there is a table in front of me”), memory beliefs (“I had cereal yesterday”), beliefs about other minds (“my colleague is in pain”), and certain self-evident truths.

The notion is central to Reformed Epistemology. Alvin Plantinga argues that belief in God can be properly basic in the same sense: rationally held, by a properly functioning cognitive faculty in the right environment, without needing to be inferred from premises a skeptic would accept.

The Great Pumpkin objection is the standard challenge: if belief in God can be properly basic, why not belief in the Great Pumpkin, or any other arbitrary candidate? Plantinga’s mature response, in Warranted Christian Belief, is that proper basicality is not a license to believe whatever one likes. It is a question of whether the belief-forming faculty is functioning properly with respect to truth, and there is no parallel story available for the Great Pumpkin.

The notion of proper basicality is the move that, in Margaret Halloran’s November entry, she concedes is harder to dismiss than her September self had assumed.