ABSTRACT
This chapter explores global debunking arguments, debunking arguments that aim to give one a global defeater. The author defends Alvin Plantinga’s view that global defeaters are possible and, once gained, are impossible to escape by reasoning. They thereby must be extinguished by other means: epistemically propitious actions, luck, or grace. The author then distinguishes between three types of global defeater—pure-undercutters, undercutters-because-rebutters, and undercutters-while-rebutters—and systematically considers how one can deflect such defeaters. Lastly, since the author draws insights from the literature on perhaps the most widely discussed global debunking argument in the literature, Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism, he ends up responding to many potential problems for it. This includes the so-called conditionalization problem, as well as those raised by Michael Bergmann, Stephen Law, Michael Deem, Perry Hendricks, Tina Anderson, and Erik Wielenberg.
