Plantinga, Kant, and Cognitive Reliability

This article applies Alvin Plantinga’s principle that self-defeat is inherent in any theory which gives the theorist reason to doubt her own cognitive faculties to Kant’s theory of perception, transcendental idealism. Because transcendental idealism excludes the possibility of knowledge about things in themselves, including the transcendental idealist’s own cognitive faculties, the theory is self-defeating under Plantinga’s argument. The article continues by arguing that Kant’s appeal to God as a way to vindicate the transcendental idealist’s cognitive faculties is problematic in several ways, and that the theory therefore cannot avoid self-defeat