The purpose of this discussion is to analyze comparatively the influential argument for religious pluralism offered by John Hick and the argument for religious exclusivism (sectarianism) which can be generated by proponents of what has come to be labeled ‘Reformed Epistemology.’ I argue that while Hick and the Reformed exclusivist appear to be giving us incompatible responses to the same question about the true nature of ‘religious’ reality, they are actually responding to related, but distinct questions, each of which must (...) be considered by those desiring to give a religious explanation for the phenomenon of religious diversity. Moreover, I conclude that the insights of neither ought to be emphasized at the expense of the other. (shrink)

Most epistemologists agree that epistemic justification is required for knowledge. This requirement is usually formulated in one of two ways: S knows that p only if S is justified in believing that p. S knows that p only if S's belief that p is justified. Surprisingly and are generally regarded as synonymous formulations of the justification condition. In Chapter 1, I argue that such a synonymy thesis is mistaken and that, in fact, and specify substantively different requirements. requires that the (...) person be justified, whereas requires that the belief in question be justified, and intuitively, these constitute different requirements. Thus, it is concluded that and employ inherently different kinds of epistemic justification in their respective analysantia. I dub them "personal justification" and "doxastic justification", respectively. The remainder of the dissertation is devoted to demonstrating both the legitimacy and the importance of the personal/doxastic justification distinction. For example, the distinction helps account for the divergent intuitions that regularly arise regarding justificatory evaluations in demon-world contexts. ;In Chapters 2 and 3 I provide analyses for doxastic and personal justification. Chapter 2 spells out an externalist reliabilist account of doxastic justification which safely avoids demon-world counterexamples. Chapter 3 advances an internalist coherence account of personal justification. In defending this coherence theory, I argue that all foundation theories are false and that the regress argument on which they are predicated is unsound. ;In Chapter 4, I propose an analysis of ordinary knowledge which only requires doxastic justification. Nevertheless personal justification plays a negative, undermining role in the analysis. I then demonstrate that this analysis of knowledge is immune to typical Gettier examples. It also remains unscathed by Harman's beefed-up Gettier cases. Finally, I consider a stronger analysis of knowledge requiring both doxastic and personal justification. Though the latter analysis proves too strong for ordinary knowledge, it remains interesting as an analysis of a more intellectualistic kind of knowledge. ;The final chapter examines the internalist/externalist controversy and demonstrates that this controversy is yet another manifestation of the personal/doxastic justification conflation. (shrink)

I have argued previously (in this journal) that the reality of pervasive religious pluralism obligates a believer to attempt to establish her perspective as the correct one. In a recent response, Jerome Gellman maintains that the believer who affirms a ‘religious epistemology’ is under no such obligation in that she need not subject her religious beliefs to any ‘rule of rationality’. In this paper I contend that there do exist some rules of rationality (some epistemic obligations) that must be acknowledged-and (...) satisfied-within all epistemic systems (including all religious epistemic systems) and that for this reason Gellman’s critique of my position fails. (shrink)

The main thesis of this paper is that it is not possible to determine the nature of epistemic justification apart from scientific psychological investigation. I call this view the strong thesis of methodological psychologism. Two sub-theses provide the primary support for this claim. The first sub-thesis is that no account of epistemic justification is correct which requires for the possession of at least one justified belief a psychological capacity which humans do not have. That is, the correct account of epistemic (...) justification must be psychologically realistic. The second sub-thesis is that it is not possible to determine whether an account of epistemic justification is psychologically realistic apart from scientific psychological investigation. After defending these subtheses, I point out some interesting consequences of the overall thesis which present a challenge to traditional epistemology. (shrink)