A popular objection to theistic commitment involves the idea that faith is irrational. Specifically, some seem to put forth something like the following argument: (P1) Everyone (or almost everyone) who has faith is epistemically irrational, (P2) All theistic believers have faith, thus (C) All (or most) theistic believers are epistemically irrational. In this paper, I argue that this line of reasoning fails. I do so by considering a number of candidates for what faith might be. I argue that, for each (...) candidate, either (P1) is false or (P2) is false. Then, I make two positive suggestions for how faith can be epistemically rational but nonetheless have a unique relationship to evidence: one, that Jamesian self-justifying attitudes describe a distinctive kind of faith in oneself and others, and two, that faith is not solely based on empirical evidence. (shrink)

Resolving religious disagreements is difficult, for beliefs about religion tend to come with strong biases against other views and the people who hold them. Evidence can help, but there is no agreed-upon policy for weighting it, and moreover bias affects the content of our evidence itself. Another complicating factor is that some biases are reliable and others unreliable. What we need is an evidence-weighting policy geared toward negotiating the effects of bias. I consider three evidence-weighting policies in the philosophy of (...) religion and advocate one of them as the best for promoting the resolution of religious disagreements. (shrink)

Reformed epistemology, roughly, is the thesis that religious belief can be rational without argument. After providing some background, I present Plantinga’s defense of reformed epistemology and its influence on religious debunking arguments. I then discuss three objections to Plantinga’s arguments that arise from the following topics: skeptical theism, cognitive science of religion, and basicality. I then show how reformed epistemology has recently been undergirded by a number of epistemological theories, including phenomenal conservatism and virtue epistemology. I end by noting that (...) a good objection to reformed epistemology must criticize either a substantive epistemological theory or the application of that theory to religious belief; I also show that the famous Great Pumpkin Objection is an example of the former. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas has long been understood to have reconciled faith and reason. Typically, he is understood as having provided justification for faith by means of proof, particularly, that the Five Ways prove the existence of God. Under this interpretation, faith becomes a species of justified belief, and the justification for faith rests upon the success of the Five Ways . In this dissertation, I argue that Aquinas' account of faith is not one of justified belief, at least as it is (...) understood in contemporary philosophy. Instead, I argue, faith has its own basis for epistemic "reasonableness"---a reasonableness that does not derive from ordinary evidence nor proof. Rather than requiring evidence accessible to the natural light of reason, Aquinas holds that faith has its own sort of "evidence"---that which results from the light of faith. Aquinas "Aristotelianizes" faith and argues that faith has the Aristotelian epistemic virtue of certitude, and in so doing reconciles faith and Aristotelian reason, at least as Aristotle was understood by Medieval philosophers. This reconciliation resolves important tensions between Aristotelian science and Christian doctrine. Further, I examine three contemporary accounts of what counts as an epistemically "responsible" belief and argue that under Aquinas' account, faith should be counted as rational, and in an important, though modified sense, as justified. (shrink)

It is sometimes suggested that there are two kinds of reasoning: inferential reasoning and non-inferential reasoning. However, it is not entirely clear what the difference between these two kinds of reasoning is. In this paper, I try to answer the question what this difference is. I first discuss three answers to this question that I argue are unsatisfactory. I then give a different answer to this question, and I argue that this answer is satisfactory. I end by showing that this (...) answer can help to resolve some disagreements in which the difference between inferential and noninferential reasoning plays a role. (shrink)

It is a commonplace belief that many beliefs, e.g. religious convictions, are a purely private matter, and this is meant in some way to serve as a defense against certain forms of criticism. In this paper it is argued that this thesis is false, and that belief is really often a public matter. This argument, the publicity of belief argument, depends on one of the most compelling and central thesis of Peircean pragmatism. This crucial thesis is that bona fide belief (...) cannot be separated from action. It is then also suggested that we should accept a form of W. K. Clifford's evidentialism. When these theses are jointly accepted in conjunction with the basic principle of ethics that it is prima facie wrong to act in such a way that may subject others to serious but unnecessary and avoidable harm, it follows that many beliefs are morally wrong. (shrink)

How should one react when one has a belief, but knows that other people—who have roughly the same evidence as one has, and seem roughly as likely to react to it correctly—disagree? This paper argues that the disagreement of other competent inquirers often requires one to be much less confident in one’s opinions than one would otherwise be.

In the introduction part of this thesis, which aims to discuss the place and importance of religious experience in Ghazali's system of thought, the place of religious experience in philosophy of religion and the place of Ghazali's religious experience in history are examined. In the first chapter, the concepts of religion, philosophy and experience are explained and their place in the framework of religious experience is explained. The possibility of religious experience, the types of religious experience and especially the concept (...) of intuition have been emphasized and the value of religious experience has been tried to be revealed in terms of being an evidence for the existence of God. In the second chapter, the life of Ghazali, the crisis he experienced in 1095 and the spiritual depression he had as a result of the religious experience that emerged as a result of this were discussed and his experience and thought shaped around it were examined. The mystics who determined the perception of religion, and the mental development theory that Ghazali developed as a result of his experience are explained. This theory is important in terms of forming a basis for his understanding of knowledge based on religious experience. In the third chapter, Ghazali's understanding of religious experience is emphasized. In this section, Ghazali's concept of religious experience and other related concepts are explained. Then, his efforts to ground the revelation and all kinds of knowledge with this religious experience were emphasized, and his 'revival' activity towards religion, philosophy, theology, fiqh, and mysticism was discussed. Ghazali rejects the grounding of knowledge with sense organs and reason and claims that knowledge should be grounded by revelation/inspiration or intuition. This claim has been discussed in various examples, and finally, an evaluation of the understanding of religious experience that is the basis of knowledge has been made and the issue of whether there is evidence for the existence of God or not has been discussed. In the end, religious experience determined his whole thought system from beginning to end. He reinterpreted everything according to religious experience and his revival project greatly influenced the Islamic world and thought after him. Keywords: Philosophy of Religion, Ghazali, Ihya (Revival), Mysticism, religious experience. (shrink)

This Element engages with the epistemic significance of disagreement, focusing on its skeptical implications. It examines various types of disagreement-motivated skepticism in ancient philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion, and general epistemology. In each case, it favors suspension of judgment as the seemingly appropriate response to the realization of disagreement. One main line of argument pursued in the Element is that, since in real-life disputes we have limited or inaccurate information about both our own epistemic standing and the epistemic standing of (...) our dissenters, personal information and self-trust can rarely function as symmetry breakers in favor of our own views. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that philosophical propositions are merely relatively true, i.e. true relative to a doxastic perspective defined at least in part by a non-inferential belief-acquiring method. Here is the strategy: first, the primary way that contemporary philosophers defend their views is through the use of rational intuition, and this method delivers non-inferential, basic beliefs which are then systematized and brought into reflective equilibrium. Second, Christian theologians use exactly the same methodology, only replacing intuition with revelation. Third, intuition (...) and revelation yield frequently inconsistent output beliefs. Fourth, there is no defensible reason to prefer the dictates of intuition to those of Christian revelation. Fifth, the resulting dilemma means that there are true philosophical propositions, but we can't know them (scepticism), or there are no philosophical propositions and the naturalists are right (nihilism), or relativism is true. I suggest that relativism is the most palatable of these alternatives. (shrink)