Ibn Taymiyya’s Fiṭralism and Alvin Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Contemporary philosophers and epistemologists as well as scholars of Islamic studies have not failed to notice some striking similarities between aspects of the Islamic notion of the “fiṭra” (humanity’s archetypal nature) articulated by the medieval Hanbalī traditionalist jurist and theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d.728/1328) and the account of the sensus divinitatis (an innate, direct perception of God) espoused by the reformed philosopher Alvin Plantinga (1932–present). This article systematically compares both these notions and more by first situating them within the antecedent historical factors and developments leading up to their emergence in their respective intellectual milieu, the theological anthropology espoused by both thinkers and the religious epistemology of each respective thinker. The article will also discuss salient differences between each doctrine and their broader parent epistemologies and will examine major objections raised against them. The comparative study reveals not only a rich source of Islamic religious epistemology to be mined by diligent researchers but the exciting application of philosophical analysis to the thought of Ibn Taymiyya. Finally, the article argues that Ibn Taymiyya’s account of the fiṭra faces some problematic epistemological conundrums, one of which will be explored in detail.

1. Introduction

This article explores the epistemologies of two formidable intellectuals, who, although separated by seven centuries, nevertheless share similar sensations and intuitions about the religious nature of belief, evidence, and justification: Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (d.728/1328), a 13th century Syrian scholar and polymath who had a firebrand apologetic project and Alvin Plantinga (1932–present), one of the major architects of the renaissance of Christian philosophy and apologetics in the 20th century. Although the article is comparative, more weight of analysis and discussion will be given to the concept of ‘fiṭra’ within Islamic theology and its account by Ibn Taymiyya as the central pillar of his epistemology, with an objection that can be raised against it. This analysis will be followed by an outline of Plantinga’s religious epistemology and its core components, which are reformed epistemology, proper functionalism, and the basic and extended Aquinas/Calvin models. A brief criticism of that model will also be mentioned. This will then lead to an exploration of some areas of comparison between both epistemologies to highlight several points of interest. Both Ibn Taymiyya and Plantinga were immensely concerned with knowledge, how it relates to God and religious living. Both have robust accounts of how they thread all these elements into a consistent thesis and framework, and this article will explore aspects of that.

2. The Islamic Concept of the Fiṭra

The noun “fiṭra” (nature, innate, native, disposition) is from the trilateral root verb f / ṭ / r meaning, among other things, ‘to create’, ‘to bring into existence’, ‘to originate’ and ‘to cause for the first time’ (Lane 1877, Bk. 1, part 6, pp. 2415–16). The complexity of the term fiṭra as a concept reflects in the numerous ways it is translated and used in European languages: ‘inborn religion’, ‘religious innocence’, ‘natural constitution’, ‘Allah’s kind way of creating’, ‘predisposition towards Islam’ and ‘man’s nature’ to mention just a few (Straface 1992, fn. 29; Holtzman 2010, p. 184, fn. 11 for the various usages). Pre-modern Muslim scholars discussed fiṭra from the Islamic primary references, giving rise to broadly seven divergent views:

• Submission (islām) as the paradigm outlook where the inner nature submits to the will of God (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr 1987, vol. 18, p. 72).
• The religion of Islam (Islām) itself (al-ʿUkbarī 1987, vol. 2, pp. 174–76, no. 205–206, part 9).
• Humanity’s archetypal metaphysical nature (ṭabīʿa) that possesses a propensity to seek out virtue, truth and the supernatural (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr 1987, vol. 18, p. 72).
• Origination (badā’a), i.e., to bring something into being for the first time according to a plan (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr 1987, vol. 18, pp. 78–79).
• The primordial covenant (mīthāq) that God took from all human beings in their disembodied state (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr 1987, vol. 18, pp. 78–81).1
• God determining or creating from eternity within each person knowledge and denial (maʿrifa wa inkār) as well as belief and disbelief (īmān wa kufr) and when the primordial covenant took place, each person accepted and affirmed their preordained state of knowledge/denial and belief/disbelief (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr 1987, vol. 18, pp. 93–94).
• God determining from pre-creation, every person’s afterlife state of disbelief or misery (kufr, shaqāwa) or belief, happiness (īmān, saʿāda), meaning their salvific jeopardy or safety respectively (al-Murtaḍā 1954, vol. 2, p. 82).

The key texts that formed the material for theological deliberations on the fiṭra include:2 (1) verses of the Qur’ān, primarily 30:30:

So set thy face to the religion, a man of pure faith-

the fiṭra of God with which He created humankind.

There is no changing God’s creation.

That is the right religion; but most men know it not –

turning to Him (Arberry translation).

(2) the familiar fiṭra reports (and its variations) found in the canonical Ḥadīth collections such as the most familiar one where the Prophet Muḥammad is attributed as saying:

Every child is born with the fiṭra (mā min mawlūd yūladu illā ʿalā al-fiṭra); it is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or Majūs, the same way as animals give birth to non-mutilated cubs. Do you think that they are mutilated before you mutilate their noses? [The Companions said]: Oh, Messenger of God, what do you think about those of them who die young? He said: God knows what they would have done [had they lived].3

This Prophetic report on the fiṭra and others produced intense discussions that overlapped with a number of theological doctrines including God’s predestination (qadar), divine Omniscience (ʿilm), free will and determinism (al-ikhtiyār wa-l-jabr) and guidance and misguidance (al-hudā wa-l-ḍalāl). Ibn Taymiyya also threaded these doctrines into his account of fiṭra as part of his epistemology, anthropology and overall exposition of an optimistic ethical vision. The details of his doctrine of fiṭra will be explored in the next section.

3. Ibn Taymiyya on the Fiṭra

It is with Ibn Taymiyya that we undoubtedly receive one of the most extensive and highly elaborate treatments of the notion of fiṭra. Yet, despite his deep concern for and the centrality of the fiṭra in his overall theological anthropology and theological epistemology, Ibn Taymiyya surprisingly did not compose a separate work on it. His discussions are scattered across various responsa, analyses, comments, explanations and annotations. This section will present in a systematic way Ibn Taymiyya’s doctrine of the fiṭra. It is not an exhaustive explication but sufficiently explains the contours of the doctrine.

Ibn Taymiyya in a long passage summarises his position regarding the fiṭra. Below is a translation of that passage:

Every human being is born in the nature of Islam. If this nature is not subsequently corrupted by the erroneous beliefs of the family and society, everyone will be able to see the truth of Islam and embrace it. The Prophet said, “All human beings are born with fiṭra, the original nature (of Islam). It is then their parents who make them Jew, Christian or Zoroastrian.” What he meant is that there is a certain nature with which God created man, and that is the nature of Islam. God endowed mankind with this essential nature the day He addressed them saying, “Am I not your Lord?” and they said, “Yes, You are” (7:172). Fiṭra is the original nature of man, uncorrupted by subsequent beliefs and practices, ready to accept the true ideas of Islam. Islam is nothing but submitting to God, and to none else; this is the meaning of the words, “There is no god except God.”

Elucidating this concept, the Prophet said, “Man is born with a perfectly sound nature (fiṭra), just as a baby animal is born to its parents, fully formed without any defect to its ears, eyes or any other organ.” He thus emphasized that a sound heart is like a sound body, and a defect is something alien which intervenes. Muslim, the famous compiler of ḥadīth, has recorded in his Ṣaḥīḥ from ʿIyāḍ Ibn Himar that the Prophet once quoted God’s words: “I created my people faithful to none but Me; afterwards the devils came upon them and misled them. They forbade them what I had permitted, and commanded them to associate with Me ones I had never authorized.”

The fiṭra is to the truth as the light of the eye is to the sun. Everyone who has eyes can see the sun if there are no veils over them. The erroneous beliefs of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism act like veils, preventing people from seeing the truth. It is common experience that people whose natural sense of taste is not spoiled love sweets; they never dislike them unless something spoils the sense of taste.

However, the fact that people are born with fiṭra does not mean that a human body is actually born with Islamic beliefs. To be sure, when we come out of the wombs of our mothers, we know nothing. We are only born with an uncorrupted heart which is able to see the truth of Islam and submit to it. If nothing happens that corrupts the heart, we would eventually become Muslims. This power to know and to act which develops into Islam when there is nothing to obstruct it or affect its natural working is the fiṭra on which God has created man.

(Ibn Taymiyya 2004, vol. 4, pp. 245–47; 1973, vol. 2, pp. 338–46; 1979–1981, vol. 8, pp. 358–468)

We can summarise Ibn Taymiyya’s position on the doctrine of the fiṭra (DF) as a set of claims, which are stated below and explained:4

(DF₁) God created human beings with a specific nature and this is the fiṭra.

God has made the fiṭra constitutional (riveted into the very nature of human beings). This not only means that there is an imprint, impression or signature of God’s handiwork, but it has been enabled to recognise its cause, i.e., a tracking towards its Maker. DF₁ leads to the claim:

(DF₂) The fiṭra of human beings includes an innate disposition to recognise God.

Thus, fiṭra for Ibn Taymiyya is equivalent to ‘Islām’, which in this sense is the natural state of full submission only to God and nothing else. This excludes specific theological doctrines and laws revealed to the Prophet (Ibn Taymiyya 2004, vol. 4, pp. 245–49; 1979–1981, vol. 4, pp. 460–61; Gobillot 2000, pp. 41–42). It also means that belief that God exists is not propositional even though that reality is expressed in the testification of faith: ‘lā ilāha illā Allāh’ (Ibn Taymiyya 2004, vol. 4, pp. 245–46; 1979–1981, vol. 4, p. 279).5 With this innate recognition comes a capacity to incline towards God and be attracted towards Him in submission. This gives us Ibn Taymiyya’s third claim:

(DF₃) The fiṭra of human beings includes an innate capacity to incline towards and submit to God.

However, this pure, default and pristine human tilt towards God, is not immune from corruptibility and so we have:

(DF₄) The human fiṭra to recognise God can be impeded but not eliminated,

In other words, although the fiṭra is constitutional and tracks its way to God, it is nevertheless susceptible to improper function. It can be prevented from functioning the way it has been created by God, namely, to recognise and return to Him. From this, we get:

(DF₅) The impediments to the human fiṭra are external and internal.

Where ‘external’ means environmental factors like upbringing, culture and society, incorrect modes of acquiring knowledge, indoctrination or unreliable processes of reasoning and ‘internal’ refers to (accumulated) cognitive deviancies like false beliefs, incorrect ideas, or unsound doctrines and their regimentation in the mind and heart over time. The sixth claim is:

(DF₆) The human fiṭra is an intuitive instrument of knowledge,

This suggests that human intuitions are a priori, that is to say, human nature contains all the necessary pre-conditions for judgments and understanding—independent of direct experience. It is also non-inferential and immediate. (Madjid 1984, pp. 65–72 quoting Ibn Taymiyya’s Naqḍ al-Manṭiq, pp. 26–30). I will return to this and its implication in the next section.

For Ibn Taymiyya then, given (DF₁–DF₆), all human beings are created by God with an unalterable and totalising natural constitution that positively recognises the existence of a Creator as well as its own weak and needy nature.6 Although this human fiṭra is unalterable, it can nevertheless be obscured or impeded from its proper function by external factors like indoctrination, upbringing and social environments antithetical to religiosity in general and hostile to Islam specifically. Such environments result in disabling the fiṭra as an intuitive instrument designed by God to be a belief-forming mechanism aimed at truth and morality (Madjid 1984, p. 61; Anjum 2012, pp. 221, 223; Qadhi 2013, p. 273). What essentially activates the fiṭra are two things: (1) the external phenomenon of the world that impinges on the senses, engendering awe and wonder that corroborates with the innate fiṭra intuitions and (2) God’s communication brought by Prophets and Messengers. This communication contains reminders that are remedies for humankind’s state of alienation from its own fiṭra. It is not surprising then that Ibn Taymiyya is highly unenthusiastic about a strong natural theology that so heavily preoccupied the kalām theologians. He states:

No prophet has ever addressed his people and asked that they should first of all know the Creator, that they should look into various arguments and infer from them His existence, for every heart knows God and recognizes His existence. Everyone is born with the fiṭra; only something happens afterwards which casts a veil over it. Hence, when one is reminded, one recalls what was there in one’s original nature (fiṭra). That is why God sent Moses (and Aaron) to Pharaoh. He said, “Speak (to him) in soft words; he might recall” (20:44); [that is, he might recall] the knowledge inherent in his original nature regarding his Lord and His blessings on him, and that he depends upon Him completely. This may lead him to faith in his Lord, or cause him “to fear” (20:44) punishment in the Hereafter in case he denies Him. This, too, may lead to faith.

(Ibn Taymiyya 2004, vol. 16, p. 338)7

Thus, the myriad phenomena of the external world, the human intellect (reason) as well as divine communiqués relayed by Prophets and Messengers act as agents complimenting and corroborating the fact or reality already internally embedded and acknowledged by the human fiṭra.

Ibn Taymiyya explicitly opposes any notion of humans having a “virgin disposition inclined neither towards the truthful nor the harmful” (Lamotte 1994, p. 59; El-Tobgui 2019, pp. 260–61) as well as any suggestion that human beings are born as a tabula rasa, which was a view held by the Andalusian Ḥadīth specialist Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d.463/1070). In summary, the latter’s view—clearly libertarian—is as follows (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr 1987, vol. 18, pp. 70–71; al-Ghusn 1996, pp. 435–38):

• The word ‘fiṭra’ mentioned in the Prophetic narration “all babies are born according to the fitra”, is interpreted not as referring to Islam (meaning submission) but suggesting a ‘specific nature’ (khilqa) that is wholesome and good but nevertheless devoid of any innate belief/disbelief, knowledge/ignorance.
• Belief/disbelief are not pre-determined by an immutable divine decree but are acquired through an actual human choice and cognitive activity.
• Belief/disbelief is determined by the external environment one is exposed to, e.g., parental upbringing, satanic insinuations, etc.
• Belief/disbelief is possible only when one attains the age of legally determined moral capacity (taklīf) based on the Qur’ānic verses such as, ‘We never punish until We have sent a messenger’ (17:15), ‘You will be rewarded only for what you do’ (37:99) and ‘Every soul will be held in pledge for its own deeds’ (74:38).

In one section, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr mentions the impossibility of having innate belief (īmān) or disbelief (kufr). He explains:

They said: if children are created according to an original innate nature with disbelief or belief, they would never be able to alter that but we may find them believing and then disbelieving. They also said: it is rationally impossible that when a child is born it intellectually discerns belief and disbelief because God brought them out in a state devoid of comprehending anything. God says, “It is God Who brought you out from the wombs of your mothers while you knew nothing”. Whoever does not have knowledge of anything, can neither have belief or disbelief nor knowledge or rejection.

(Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr 1987, vol. 18, pp. 70)

Hence, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr argues that human beings have no innate predisposition for recognising truth, guidance or belief. Human nature is amoral, or neutral, albeit whole and sound. Therefore, fiṭra is not equivalent to Islam (Mohamed 1995, p. 134). It is the environment that shapes the trajectory of human choice whether to believe or disbelieve or be receptive to guidance or misguidance and not an immutable divine decree and determination (ibid., pp. 134–35). The motivation for this view was a rejection of the hard determinism from senior early figures like ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Mubārak (d.181/797) who believed in the divine immutable determination of belief and disbelief within a person and ipso facto the determination of their salvation or damnation (ibid., p. 125). For Ibn Taymiyya, however, the fiṭra is not—contra Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr it seems—this neutral, abstract potentia or inert divine impression, but it is both a positive tendency towards acknowledgment and affirmation of God’s existence as well as an a priori criterion for truth that carries a default privilege and normativity (ibid., p. 142). Ibn Taymiyya’s fiṭra innatism is a response to Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s suggested neutrality. One of his main objections against the tabula rasa view is that if there is no innate knowledge of God, i.e., no natural normative state of humanity, then there is no way that human nature ought to be and ought to function. If this is the case, then the Prophet’s ḥadīth mentioning the deviations of other religions would not make sense; especially in the case of a newborn who is subsequently indoctrinated into the religion of his parents as a child. There would be no moral nor salvific significance in it because there would be no departure from the way human nature ought to be and function; it would only be a circumstantial matter related to the child’s upbringing (Holtzman 2010, pp. 174–75). However, perhaps the disagreement with Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr is overstated (Qadhi 2013, pp. 278–79; 2021, p. 9, fn. 22). Though Ibn Taymiyya may disagree with the former by asserting that humanity has a created fiṭra that has the potential to be contaminated, he nevertheless does agree with him in favouring a non-deterministic account of how it can become corrupted through disbelief and misguidance or indeed remedied with correct belief and guidance. It is through human choice and acts and not divine coercive foreknowledge that one either believes or disbelieves and thereby affects their created fiṭra (Holtzman 2010, pp. 176–78).

In the next section, I will outline how Ibn Taymiyya’s notion of fiṭra is presuppositional in its nature and how this raises a specific epistemological conundrum for him.

4. The Fitra Epistemology and ‘Fiṭralism’ of Ibn Taymiyya

The focus of this section is on Ibn Taymiyya’s epistemology and whether or not his account of the fiṭra is presuppositional in nature and if this is the case, what challenges this raises regarding the coherence of his presuppositional system.

In the previous section, I examined the various interpretations of fiṭra by early Islamic scholars as well as Ibn Taymiyya’s own view of it. One doctrine we will now return to is:

(DF₆) The human fiṭra is an intuitive instrument of knowledge.

This doctrine needs unpacking. I think Ibn Taymiyya is claiming more than the fiṭra being a simple instrument of knowledge among say the five senses, memory or testimony; rather it appears that he is over-endowing it, i.e., allowing it to do too much. He seems to suggest that not only do all epistemic virtues measure up to the dictates of the fiṭra, but all sound reasoning must accord with it. We could say that compliance with the fiṭra rubrics promotes the original values determined by God for the human purpose of recognising, loving and ‘returning’ to Him. Failure to comply with the fiṭra rubrics leads to the sub-optimal realisation of those values. However, failure to comply also entails much more: human cognitive failure. We are not thinking and feeling in the way we are supposed to. The fiṭra, therefore, is what enables us to be cognitive agents the way God intended. What I will do now is briefly list the core tenets of Ibn Taymiyya’s fiṭra-epistemology followed by what I am arguing is a form of presuppositionalism and then state a major objection that can be raised against that. Ibn Taymiyya’s fiṭra-epistemology contains the following core tenets (summarised from al-Qarnī 2003, pp. 65–172; Qadhi 2013, pp. 250–83; 2021, pp. 12–26; El-Tobgui 2019, pp. 253–76; Samrīn 2020, pp. 437–62):

• The fiṭra is a supra-rational source of knowledge.
• The fiṭra is embedded in the human psyche.
• The fiṭra contains a set of a priori knowledge.
• The fiṭra-based knowledge claims are immediate and intuitive (non-inferential).
• The fiṭra justifies beliefs and knowledge claims.
• The fiṭra is a verification criterion for beliefs.
• The fiṭra is a verification criterion for itself (self-authenticated).
• The fiṭra engenders certainty of belief.
• The fiṭra is its own evidence for some belief or claim.
• The fiṭra is a receptive capacity
• The fiṭra is akin to set of powers.
• The fiṭra is an orientation towards correct beliefs and virtues.
• The fiṭra is not identical to the intellect but subsumes it.
• The fiṭra gives knowledge of the laws of logic.
• The location of the fiṭra is the heart.
• The proper function of the fiṭra can be impeded.

This list of core tenets (not seemingly consistent) on the fiṭra makes it not only an epistemic instrument, a means by which knowledge is acquired nor is it only an innate receptivity capacity for truth, but both an entire cognitive architecture as well as a totalising package of fundamental ideas and concepts necessary for truth and knowledge organisation, acquisition, recognition and evaluation. For Ibn Taymiyya, this fiṭra must be innate and presupposed and not argued for in any human cognitive activity, i.e., there is no justification needed for the presupposition of the fiṭra because its normativity is derived from it being anthropologically constitutional, prior and created in human beings and is thus its own authority. The fiṭra characterised in this way is what I mean by the term ‘Fiṭralism’.8 One serious implication I see of this kind of presuppositional epistemology at work here is that there are no religiously neutral concepts and ideas like cause, effect, etc. as these are situated within a divinely-directed and divinely-created fiṭra. In other words, there can never be any common ground between a believer and non-believer to prove knowledge claims. In fact, one could not even prove one’s own claims as true. Before spelling that out the worry, let me state what I take to be two claims that Ibn Taymiyya no doubt upholds:

Claim 1: Rational agents like human beings are bound to/by a cognitive schema by which they understand and interpret the world. Ibn Taymiyya accepts this because of his innatism, where humans are not born as a complete tabula rasa but have innate beliefs.

Claim 2: There are no common or neutral grounds by which rational agents understand and interpret the world or adjudicate intellectual disputes aimed at discovering truth (there cannot be because it is all mediated by their cognitive schema).

Given both these claims, I formulate a problem with this kind of an IT-type fiṭra-epistemology. By ‘IT’ I mean Ibn Taymiyya and by ‘F’ I mean the fiṭralism just outlined above. Formally, the objection is as follows:

• IT knows his F-schema to be true [assumption].
• The F-schema of IT is the total claims that he accepts as true and which are used to understand and interpret the world in which he exists.
• For IT to know that his F-schema is true he must have immediate access to reality to assess whether any claims based on the F-schema correspond with reality.
• If IT understands and interprets the world only through his F-schema, then he cannot have immediate access to reality in order to assess whether any claims based on the F-schema correspond with reality.
• Therefore, IT cannot know his F-schema to be true [conclusion].

We are led to a contradiction between the conclusion and premise 1, the initial assumption. Let me give some detail to each premise of the argument to clarify what they suggest. Premises 1 and 2 are clear from the views about the fiṭra discussed in the article so far. Paradoxically, Ibn Taymiyya even argues for the existence of God from the fiṭra—which for him is a belief stronger than necessary truths (like mathematical truths) acquired via reasoning (Ibn Taymiyya 2004, vol. 2, p. 72). Premise 2 specifically captures the nature and role of the fiṭra within his epistemology. It is that totalising criterion and package of ideas that include a priori and necessary truths. Premise 3 is reasonable. It is a correspondence theory of truth. Ibn Taymiyya does not reject this (to my knowledge). Premise 4 is the crux of the argument. Ibn Taymiyya cannot confirm the claims based on his F-schema from an independent, unbiased, objective and neutral criterion because there are not any. There is only the F-schema. Ibn Taymiyya cannot step outside the box and assess from without because there is no ‘outside the box’. In order to check his schema with reality, he has to use the very schema he would be trying to examine. The conclusion of the objection just follows given the premises. If the premises are true, Ibn Taymiyya is in an epistemological predicament. He would be trapped in his own presuppositional framework—his fiṭralism—because for him there would be no way of knowing if there is anything else beyond it. Nazir Khan in his article on Ibn Taymiyya’s epistemology explicates this presuppositional method. He comments, for example, that for Ibn Taymiyya “certainty (yaqīn) is not pursued through the accumulation of philosophical justifications but rather is anchored internally through spiritual recognition and the dictates of the fiṭra” (Khan 2020, citing Naqḍ al-Manṭiq, p. 49). He adds that “conceptual truths that frame meaningful representations of reality are rooted in the fiṭra and serve as ontological building blocks that are indispensable for the mind” (ibid.). And elsewhere, highlighting Ibn Taymiyya’s broader rejection of kalām evidentialism explains that Ibn Taymiyya espouses “that the very concepts of proof, truth, reason, purpose, and existence only surface in the mind as a result of a natural human primordial consciousness and that to deny this is simply to render reality unintelligible” (ibid.). This hard presuppositionalism therefore would lock Ibn Taymiyya into a schema that does not allow him to assert or indeed verify whether his own schema corresponds with reality. His endowing the fiṭra with such an all-governing epistemological framework, in effect, leaves nothing beyond his F-Schema.

According to a powerful objection raised by a reviewer, this critique I propose against Ibn Taymiyya’s fiṭra-based epistemology relies implicitly on internalist epistemic assumptions—namely, that for one to know that one’s foundational interpretive framework (the “F-schema”) is true, one must have independent access to reality to verify its correspondence. The reviewer rightly notes that such a condition is not necessary if Ibn Taymiyya is understood as an epistemic externalist. From an externalist perspective, a belief-forming process or faculty (such as the fiṭra) may yield knowledge so long as it is reliable, even if the subject lacks internal access to the grounds of its reliability. This objection is significant because it challenges the internalist premise (specifically, premise 3 in my argument), and points to recent scholarship that reads Ibn Taymiyya through an externalist lens, e.g., Turner (2025).

Considering this, and in dialectical spirit, I have revised both the framing of Ibn Taymiyya’s fiṭralism and the structure of my original critique. First, I could reframe Ibn Taymiyya’s epistemology in strictly internalist terms, where I can interpret the fiṭra as a dispositional and teleological capacity: a natural orientation embedded in human nature that inclines the soul toward epistemic and moral truths. The fiṭra on this reframing would not be a totalising presuppositional cognitive architecture nor a repository of innate propositional beliefs or a purely rational a priori faculty (I of course did not argue these last two points). Rather, it would be a non-propositional, affective and intuitive disposition that—when unobstructed—yields recognition of self-evident truths. This account of fiṭra coheres well with a moderate form of epistemic externalism, where knowledge does not require reflective access to its grounds, but arises from properly functioning faculties in appropriate conditions. Second, I could revise the core tenets of my fiṭralism accordingly, removing any suggestion that the fiṭra is itself ‘evidence’ or that it delivers innate propositional content. Instead, it would be characterized as a truth-conducive orientation that can render certain truths immediately compelling or self-evident, particularly when supported by prophetic reminders and social reinforcement.9

With this clarification in place, I can now reformulate my original argument in a way that does not rely on internalist epistemic access. Instead, the revised challenge focuses on a deeper structural concern: epistemic circularity.

Formally Refined F-Schema Argument (Circularity Objection)

Let:

• F = the fiṭra, a God-given faculty that generates foundational beliefs.
• S = the epistemic subject (i.e., Ibn Taymiyya or any human knower).
• R(F) = the claim that the fiṭra is reliable (i.e., truth-conducive or conducive to monotheistic beliefs).

  (1)

  S holds that the fiṭra (F) produces true beliefs and thus forms the basis of justified belief (i.e., R(F)).

  (2)

  S justifies R(F) based on the deliverances of the fiṭra itself (i.e., beliefs generated by F are taken as evidence that F is reliable).

  (3)

  Therefore, the justification for R(F) is based on F, i.e., on the very faculty whose reliability is in question.

  (4)

  This is a form of epistemic circularity (bootstrapping): S assumes the reliability of F to justify the reliability of F.

  (5)

  Epistemic circularity is generally considered insufficient for non-question-begging knowledge or warrant.

  (6)

  Therefore, S cannot non-circularly know or justify that the fiṭra is reliable (i.e., S cannot know R(F)).

This structure is agnostic regarding internalism or externalism. Even if one adopts externalism (as it can be argued Ibn Taymiyya does), the meta-question remains: on what grounds can one know or justify that one’s fundamental interpretive faculty (here the fiṭra) is itself truth-tracking? If the only possible evidence comes from within the system it is meant to validate, then any such epistemology risks epistemic circularity—a classic problem also found in foundationalist and Reformed epistemologies. This bootstrapping critique is not unique to Ibn Taymiyya; similar challenges have been raised against Reformed Epistemology, particularly in the form of the “Great Pumpkin Objection” (see below Section 5). Nevertheless, it highlights an unresolved tension in any epistemology that grounds warrant in a faculty that is also the condition of all interpretation. If fiṭra is the lens through which all truth is seen, then its reliability cannot be independently verified—it must be taken on trust, divine design, or pragmatism.

5. Alvin Plantinga’s Religious Epistemology

In this penultimate section, I will outline the core components that form the religious epistemology of philosopher Alvin Plantinga with some criticisms. This will be followed by the final section which is a comparison between Ibn Taymiyya’s fiṭra-epistemology and Plantinga’s religious epistemology.

Alvin Plantinga is arguably one of the most influential philosophers of religion. In the analytic tradition, it is hard to find a serious rival. He has contributed penetrating treatments of questions related to areas of metaphysics, modal logic, philosophy of mind and theology. My concern here will be on his novel insights in the field of epistemology and the specifically religious (Christian) epistemology he defends, which has had a reverberating impact on all those after him pursuing a thoroughly Christian epistemology of revelation. Plantinga’s religious epistemology consists of three components: (1) his reformed epistemology, (2) a proper functionalist theory of warrant and (3) his basic and extended Aquinas/Calvin models. The former two components are philosophical and the third is particularly Christian in application. Given the limited space, the explication I will give here is neither exhaustive nor detailed; it merely captures in broad strokes epistemological ideas and arguments Plantinga proposed and subsequently developed at various stages of his career over nearly five decades in response to various objections, personal clarifications and progression of thought.10

Reformed Epistemology: Stated simply, reformed epistemology is the thesis that belief in God is rational without the need for evidence or argument. The label finds its origins in the Reformed or Calvinist circles represented by, in addition to John Calvin, theologians like Karl Barth, Herman Bavinck, G. C. Berkouwer, Herman Hoeksema and Abraham Kuyper, who all rejected natural theology as misguided (for a meticulously researched account of this, see Sudduth 2009, pp. 9–40). The main goal behind reformed epistemology is to block the claim of evidentialism that theistic belief like belief in God is appropriate, rational and reasonable if and only if it is based on sufficient evidence like arguments or propositional evidence. Plantinga argues that there are many beliefs that are rational to believe in even if we cannot furnish any good arguments for them. Examples include belief in one’s self, memory beliefs, other minds and the past. We hold them but do not reason our way to them via propositional evidence, i.e., arguments (here meaning inferential, where an derives or draws from one proposition, the conclusion, from other propositions, the premises). If this is the case with such beliefs then the same holds for the belief that God exists. It is rational without propositional evidence. This is Plantinga’s parity argument or argument from analogy (Beilby 2005, pp. 34–38, 97–99; Baldwin and McNabb 2019, pp. 3–5). Moreover, in true reformed fashion, he radically insists that belief in God requires no need for arguments at all (natural theology). That is not to say arguments are not useful; it is that they are neither necessary, definitive nor universally convincing (Manning 2013, pp. 207–10).

Plantinga’s second line of attack is against classical foundationalism (Plantinga 2000, pp. 93–99). Although he is not against foundationalism simpliciter, he does reject the classical foundationalist constraint that beliefs that are neither self-evident (like logical and mathematical truths), evident to the senses (like perceptual experiences) or certain (like incorrigible beliefs) cannot be categorised as epistemically properly basic beliefs. A belief is considered ‘basic’, on the one hand, for a person if it is not based on any other beliefs in that person’s noetic structure. Derived or ‘non-basic’ beliefs, in contrast, are beliefs that are held on the basis of other beliefs in a person’s noetic structure. Labelling beliefs as ‘basic’ or ‘non-basic’ is a reference to the modality of their acceptance, i.e., whether they are accepted immediately or inferentially; it says nothing about their epistemic status. On the other hand, a properly basic belief, in rough terms, is one that is not inferred from evidence or an argument but is grounded in the rational and appropriate product of a person’s experience or something similar. To give an example, my experience of seeing my injured hand contains my belief ‘I see my injured hand’, which is basic because it is not inferred from evidence or an argument and it is properly basic because my experience really and solidly grounds it. According to classical foundationalism, the belief that God exists or beliefs related to God are not properly basic. They require supporting evidence and argument. Plantinga argues that the conditions specified under classical foundationalism are too narrow and would exclude many foundational or basic beliefs from our noetic structure like physical objects endure in an external-to-mind world, the future will resemble the past, reliability of memory and the example just cited about the injured hand (Plantinga 2000, pp. 94–97; Baldwin and McNabb 2019, pp. 6–8). Finally, Plantinga objects to classical foundationalism on the grounds that there is no argument that evidentially supports it according to its own conditions of being self-evident, evident to the senses and certain. In other words, classical foundationalism is self-refuting (Plantinga 2000, pp. 94–97. See also Klein 2009, pp. 304–6).

Proper functionalism: In general terms, proper functionalism refers to a set of epistemological views about whether our beliefs (or doxastic states) have some positive epistemic status (like being an item of knowledge or justified belief) due to being formed by our cognitive faculties functioning properly. Central to Plantinga’s account of proper functionalism is the notion of warrant, which is an epistemic property that makes the difference between something being a mere belief to being knowledge. It is his alternative to the concept of justification. Warrant is generated when the belief-forming and belief-maintaining faculties are not only functioning but functioning properly—the way they ought to function. This means that there is a design plan as well as a conducive environment that gears all cognitive equipment to optimal use. Ultimately, Plantinga argues that a supernatural creator-designer—God—has set out an overall design plan that includes human cognitive faculties conducive to knowledge acquisition (Beilby 2005, pp. 82–97; Baldwin and McNabb 2019, pp. 14–20).11 According to Plantinga, a person S is warranted (justified) in believing something, p, if and only if S’s belief in p is (i) formed by way of his cognitive faculties functioning the way they are designed to, (ii) within an environment for which the cognitive faculties can optimally operate, (iii) were the cognitive faculties have been designed for the production of true beliefs and (iv) a good design plan that ensures true beliefs are formed by properly functioning faculties within a conducive environment (Plantinga 1993, pp. 3–47). There is no accessibility condition (like introspection or reflection) or awareness condition (like mental states) on the warrant, meaning that a person does not need to have some internal reason justifying the beliefs that they have. To give an example, if I believe that I can see a bird perched on the branch of a tree in my garden and my cognitive faculty (here visual perception) is functioning properly then I am warranted in my belief. However, if there is actually no bird perched on the tree branch, and I am merely wishing there was one, or if the environment is not conducive for my visual perception, e.g., if it is pitch dark, then I will not be able to see the bird. I would in this instance lack warrant for my belief. This will be the case regardless of my internal states as a knower, i.e., even if I have no access to the actual justification for my belief or my justification being grounded in my psychology. Therefore, warrant is an externalist epistemological view.12

The Aquinas/Calvin models: There is an apologetic thrust in Plantinga’s epistemological works that aim to defend the rationality of general theistic belief by demonstrating that it has warrant and more specifically Christian doctrines and beliefs that also have warrant. To this end, Plantinga proposes two models that can show this based on the ideas of Aquinas (A) and Calvin (C); hence the A/C models for short. A ‘model’ is a possibly true framework that can describe how any of the target propositions under the model can be possibly true. Plantinga proposes a basic A/C model and an extended A/C model. The basic A/C shows how general theistic belief is warranted and the extended A/C model is supposed to show how specifically Christian belief is warranted for Christians in an epistemically basic way. According to the basic A/C model, all persons have knowledge of God by a special cognitive belief-forming faculty or disposition that Calvin, building on the ideas of Aquinas, called the sensus divinitatis (Sudduth 2009, pp. 53–63). Plantinga’s adoption and construal of it is as an innate cognitive faculty that, given certain appropriate circumstances and its proper function, the sensus divinitatis occasions immediate and non-inferential theistic beliefs like God’s existence, His nature and activities (Plantinga 2000, pp. 168–98). Theistic beliefs are warranted based on the sensus divinitatis—and thereby considered knowledge—because they satisfy all the conditions of warrant: the beliefs are basic (non-inferential), properly basic (grounded in experience), produced via a reliable cognitive faculty (sensus divinitatis) that is designed (by God) for forming true beliefs given the right sorts of triggers or stimuli (Plantinga 2015, pp. 37–40).

According to the extended A/C model, Plantinga argues for how specifically Christian belief is properly basic and warranted, given humankind’s fallen and sinful nature that has left them affectively and noetically impaired and alienated from God. It has also left the sensus divinitatis damaged and sub-optimal, although not entirely eliminated. God rescued humankind from this fallen condition with a way to renew and be saved. This is attained, Plantinga believes, via a three-tiered cognitive process: (1) inspired scripture: the divine provision of a dispensation containing the path to salvation. (2) internal testimony: the holy spirit working in a person’s heart by mending his human sinful nature and the cognitive deficiencies as a result of that. This awakens a person to the truths of the Gospels and enables them to embrace it. (3) production of faith: the holy spirit testifies to the truth of the Bible to a person and prompts him to have faith (knowledge) in it (Plantinga 2000, pp. 241–89; Beilby 2005, pp. 179–215; Baldwin and McNabb 2019, pp. 20–23). Plantinga calls the synergy between Scripture and the holy spirit in the production of faith as the internal instigation of the holy spirit (IIHS). Christian belief is warranted on the extended A/C model because it satisfies the conditions of warrant: the specific Christian beliefs are basic (non-inferential), properly basic (grounded in religious experience), produced via a reliable faculty (the IIHS) that is designed (by God) for forming true beliefs in accordance with the Bible given the rights sort of triggers or stimuli (like a star filled night sky) (van Kralingen 2018, pp. 24–40).

Despite the significant influence of Plantinga’s religious epistemology—particularly his argument that belief in God can be properly basic—his position has not been without criticism. One major line of critique targets the epistemic isolation and parochialism of Plantinga’s sensus divinitatis model. Critics argue that if belief in God is warranted simply because it stems from a divinely implanted faculty functioning properly in an appropriate epistemic environment, then similar claims could be made by adherents of other religions or even highly implausible belief systems. This leads to what is often called the “Great Pumpkin Objection”, suggesting that any belief—however fantastical—could be considered warranted if it is basic and formed under allegedly proper conditions. While Plantinga responds by invoking the notion of a truth-aimed design plan and defeater-defeated conditions, his critics contend that such responses lack intersubjective verifiability and result in epistemic relativism, especially in pluralistic contexts (Kim 2012, pp. 66–81). Another frequently cited criticism concerns the alleged circularity at the heart of Plantinga’s model. Since the epistemic warrant of belief depends on it being produced by cognitive faculties designed by God, the justification of belief in God ultimately presupposes the very being whose existence is in question. This circularity, some argue, renders the model question-begging and incapable of providing a truly independent justification for theism. More recent critiques emerging from the cognitive science of religion (CSR) add another layer of difficulty for Plantinga’s model. Kvandal (2020), for example, introduces what he calls the “God-Faculty Dilemma”. This dilemma challenges the coherence of positing a sensus divinitatis as either a natural or supernatural faculty. If it is natural, it should be detectable, falsifiable, and subject to the same empirical scrutiny as other cognitive systems. However, no such faculty has been identified through empirical means. If it is supernatural, then it lies beyond scientific or rational analysis, making it epistemically insulated and inaccessible to non-theists. Either way, the faculty fails to meet the standards of a publicly assessable warrant. Moreover, findings in CSR suggest that the human mind may be naturally predisposed to hyperactive agency detection and teleological reasoning, tendencies that may lead to belief in gods or spiritual forces. While Plantinga sees the sensus divinitatis as aimed at truth through divine design, CSR researchers argue that such beliefs may be evolutionary by-products rather than properly functioning truth-tracking faculties. This perspective undermines the claim that belief in God is reliably produced or epistemically privileged. Compounding this is the pluralism problem: if all humans are endowed with such a faculty, why do they arrive at radically different theological conclusions? Plantinga’s answer as—that sin has corrupted the sensus divinitatis in non-Christians—appears ad hoc and untestable, raising concerns about theological bias and epistemic exclusivism.

In light of these criticisms, Plantinga’s religious epistemology remains a profound yet contested model. While it offers a bold defense of the rationality of theistic belief, especially within the Reformed tradition, its conceptual and empirical challenges continue to provoke debate across philosophy, theology, and the cognitive sciences.

6. Taymiyyan and Plantingan Theological Epistemologies: A Comparison

In this final section, I examine some interesting points of agreement and equally interesting points of disagreement between Ibn Taymiyya’s fiṭra epistemology and Plantinga’s religious epistemology. I will briefly look at three areas: foundationalism, evidentialism and innatism. From the comparison, I also underscore some broader observations embedded in the way Ibn Taymiyya and Plantinga construct the relation between God, revelation and humans as knowing agents that within their respective faith traditions and the complexities arising out of that relation.

There are several broad and obvious similarities between the epistemologies of Ibn Taymiyya and Plantinga outlined in the previous two sections. I will briefly outline each area of comparison. First, both are anti-foundationalists and anti-evidentialist. To put it in crude terms, foundationalism is a theory of justification holding that all justified beliefs ultimately rest on non-inferentially justified beliefs in order to terminate an infinite regress of justifications because if we do not, then in order to believe anything at all, we would require an infinite number of infinitely long chains of reasoning (Fumerton 2002, pp. 210–16). Candidates of non-inferential justification include (1) self-evident and necessary propositions, (2) everything immediate to the senses and (3) certainty (incorrigibility), where the latter includes belief types such as indefeasibility (beliefs subjectively and objectively immune from doubt), indubitability (beliefs impossible to doubt by the knower like their own conscious states), infallibility (beliefs that could not have been mistaken) and inimitability (beliefs justified to the highest degree possible). 1–3 form bedrock beliefs upon which all our beliefs must rest (Reed 2022). Excluded from that, however, is belief in God. Evidentialism is roughly the view that evidence is required for our doxastic attitude to have any positive epistemic standing. In other words, it is not possible for beliefs to be justified, warranted or rational in the absence of supporting evidence. According to evidentialism, belief in God would require either propositional evidence or argumentation. Given this, it would also mean that Ibn Taymiyya and Plantinga are epistemic non-evidentialists (On this in contemporary epistemology, see Pedersen and Moretti (2021, pp. 1–24)). For Plantinga, he accepts the following two theses:

(a)

There is sufficient evidence for belief in God: in fact, he has proposed several sophisticated arguments for that belief and does not entirely reject the usefulness of arguments within a natural theology (Plantinga 2018, pp. 461–79).

(b)

It is rational to accept theistic beliefs without sufficient evidence: even though there may be reasons to support belief in God, the theist is not beholden to the evidentialist demand for epistemological propriety by supporting it with evidence.

Plantinga reads the evidentialist as claiming irrationality in the theist’s belief unless he can provide evidence or arguments for that belief. Neither evidence, nor argument are necessary for theistic belief to be rational because, as already outlined above, Plantinga considers theistic beliefs not to be within the family of beliefs that are evidence-essential (like science), but in the family of beliefs that are properly basic like testimony, memory, introspection, perception, etc. (For an excellent early discussion and critique of Plantinga’s anti-evidentialism, refer to Kretzmann 1992, pp. 17–38).

Ibn Taymiyya on the other hand objects to the requirement stipulated by his interlocutors—the mutakallimūn and philosophers—that the premises in the arguments for the existence of a maker and originator of the world (ṣāniʿ, khāliq), must meet the foundationalist-evidentialist standard—namely, they must be self-evident, necessary and certain—otherwise belief in God would not be knowledge and would be unjustified and thereby deficient (Izutsu 1965, pp. 119–30). This kalām deontologism burdens a believer with a very high view of epistemic duties, namely, one must not arrive at belief in God unless one has the strongest degree of justification of the foundationalist-evidentialist sort. Ibn Taymiyya argues that such a requirement is neither scripturally imposed nor intellectually cogent. The former because belief in God is naturally ingrained and intuitive and so the Qur’ān neither stipulates the need for apodeictic demonstration (burhān) for belief nor does it sanction any obligation to seek out such proofs and the latter because the arguments presented by the mutakallimūn are (a) technical, difficult, convoluted, (b) have little sound theological appeal and (c) are not typically the sources of a believer’s religious conviction and confidence (īmān). However, like Plantinga, Ibn Taymiyya does accept that God’s existence can be proven with propositional evidence, that is, inferentially (Ibn Taymiyya 1973, “Kalām ʿalā al-Fiṭra”, vol. 2, p. 341; Hallaq 1991, p. 57).

Connected to the issue of what counts as proper justification just discussed is the divide between what has come to be known as epistemological particularism and methodism. Both terms were originally introduced and defined by Roderick Chisholm in his modern reformulation of the ‘Problem of the Criterion’, a difficulty raised by scepticism that traces back to Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism (On this see Lemos (2021, pp. 177–97)). Chisholm introduces the problem with two questions: (1) what do we know and (2) how are we to decide what we know. From the view of epistemological particularism, you assume an answer to (1) and then use that to answer (2). In other words, you decide what things you know to be self-evidently true, necessary or certain and then procced to identify and learn from the paradigmatic cases of knowledge what its necessary and sufficient conditions are (ibid., pp. 178–79). Inversely, the epistemic methodist assumes an answer to (2) and uses that to answer (1). That is, you first discover what the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge are and then apply them to particular beliefs to see if they meet the criteria to be considered as knowledge (ibid., pp. 179–81). Arguably, both Ibn Taymiyya and Alvin Plantinga are broadly epistemological particularists in this sense. Both maintain that we ought not to commence any knowledge inquiry having assumed some robust methodology for arriving at true belief or knowledge. Neither belief nor knowledge is the terminus after an evidentially supported sequence of arguments. They are the assumed departure point. Ibn Taymiyya for example accepts, in addition to fiṭra-based knowledge, both immediate, spontaneous and non-inferential knowledge (badīhī) and necessary knowledge (ḍarūrī). They are prior epistemic provisions to arrive at paradigmatic cases of knowledge and do not stand in need of any defense or justification. Similarly, as already explained above (see Section 5), Plantinga rejects the criterial conception of justified belief, where we have properly basic beliefs that are not believed on the basis of other beliefs. These beliefs are already part of our noetic structure.

A final point of comparison between Ibn Taymiyya and Plantinga is their subscription to a form of religious innatism. This is the notion that human beings have prior, initial conditions for their cognitive life that are not acquired through interaction with the environment and the world. This would make them, in a loose sense, theistic nativists. Each hold that belief in God is not only obvious, but native to (lodged into) our very noetic infrastructure. For Ibn Taymiyya, belief in God is impressed into the very fiṭra and for Plantinga, the sensus divinitatis is a set of dispositions that enable the formation of belief in God. Thus, there is an interplay between inherent facts about human nature and the environment or external world. We not only sense what is around us (the sensible), we make sense of what is around us (intelligibility). For Ibn Taymiyya, the fiṭra is the means by which we ground our comprehensive understanding of key matters like morality and truth. We come preloaded with knowledge and recognition of morality and truth that can, and inevitably does, become obfuscated. Intelligibility, therefore, is explained by the activity of the fiṭra. However, despite this, as far as I can see, neither the fiṭra nor the sensus divinitatis are held as hermeneutical instruments, meaning they are not a source with which scripture is interpreted, like reason is. More specifically, neither are taken as a hermeneutic criterion for adjudicating conflicting interpretive positions nor have they been the basis for which a set of cohesive hermeneutical canons were devised. If we take Ibn Taymiyya as an example, we do not find in his Qur’ānic methodology of interpretation any reference to the fiṭra as a level of interpretation. In other words, we do not see Qur’ānic verses interpreted in light of the fiṭra as a central notion.

Finally, both Ibn Taymiyya and Plantinga appear to imply that human endowed innateness through the fiṭra and sensus divinitatis, respectively, is not merely a brute and arbitrary endowment; rather, it is structured with the particular purpose of aiding humans in their pathway to living out a religious life whose principles and parameters are defined by revelation. Hence, there is an overall teleology to their innatism. For Ibn Taymiyya, the primordial covenant between disembodied humanity and God involves a pretemporal act of recognition and affirmation—an intuitive assent to divine lordship (rubūbiyya) that is etched into the very structure of the human soul. This metaphysical moment grounds the fiṭra’s ongoing orientation toward truth and piety and anticipates the eventual encounter with revelation as a divine reminder rather than novel information. For Plantinga, the sensus divinitatis functions as a cognitive faculty implanted by God to produce true theistic belief in appropriate conditions—belief that, while damaged by sin, is intended to be reawakened through the operation of the Holy Spirit and the reception of revealed Scripture. In both thinkers, then, innate religiosity is not epistemically inert but teleologically directed: it is meant to culminate in a life of submission to divine truth and participation in the revealed path to human flourishing and ultimate salvation.

7. Conclusions

Ibn Taymiyya and Plantinga both reveal interesting parallels in their respective epistemologies. Although there are deep differences (obviously and inevitably), the degree of similarity and overlap underscores how there are perennial epistemological questions as they relate specifically to theological doctrine. Some of these questions include how we know fundamental theological truths like God’s existence, what counts as evidence, what is the nature of justification, and how we define rationality. Ibn Taymiyya and Plantinga have clearly maneuvered themselves into an anti-foundationalist and anti-evidentialist position that, although within the Christian tradition of the last half-century (at least) has received rigorous philosophical explication, little kindred development of this position has taken place within contemporary Islamic theology or philosophy.13 However, with the current formation of the field of Islamic analytic epistemology thoroughly underway,14 there may be an invitation for fresh forays into the long-standing kalām evidentialist fortress or further interest in the fiṭra epistemology articulated by Ibn Taymiyya, whether that be its merits or limitations. This article made preliminary comparative explorations between Ibn Taymiyya and Alvin Plantinga with a focus on Taymiyyan fiṭralism and one possible challenge such a theological epistemology may face. Nevertheless, justifiably, one can be sanguine about the prospects of alternative epistemological accounts to foundationalism emerging in the near future.