In this book and in its sequels, Warrant and Proper Function and Warranted Christian Belief, I examine the nature of epistemic warrant, that quantity, enough of which distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief. Contemporary epistemologists seldom focus attention on the nature of warrant; and when they do, they display deplorable diversity: some claim that what turns true belief into knowledge is a matter of epistemic dutifulness, others that it goes by coherence, and still others that it is conferred by reliability. (...) I shall argue that none of these claims is correct, and (in Warrant and Proper Function) suggest a more satisfactory alternative. In the present book, I survey current contributions to the discussion of warrant and neighboring issues. I begin with internalism, looking first at the carefully crafted foundationalist internalism of Roderick Chisholm (Chs. 2 and 3). To better understand Chisholm and other internalists, however, I first make a preliminary excursus (Ch 1) into the classical internalism of Descartes, Locke, and others. After Chisholmian internalism, I turn to coherentism, which for classificatory purposes I take as a form of internalism. In the next three chapters, I consider coherentism taken generally (Ch. 4), the specific version of coherentism developed by Laurence BonJour (Ch. 5), and contemporary Bayesian versions of coherentism (Chs. 6 and 7). Next (Ch. 8), there is the more attenuated internalism of John Pollock, which I see as a transition from internalism to externalism. Finally, I examine the reliabilist and externalist views of William Alston, Fred Dretske, and Alvin Goldman (Ch. 9), and close with a preview of Warrant and Proper Function (Ch. 10). (shrink)

In this book's companion volumes (Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function), I examined the nature of epistemic warrant, that quantity, enough of which distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief; in this book, I turn to the question of whether Christian belief can be justified, rational, and warranted. Among objections to Christian belief, we can distinguish between de facto objections and de jure objections, i.e., between those that claim that Christian belief is false (de facto objections) and those (...) that claim that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or in some other way rationally unacceptable (de jure objections). The main question of this book is the question of whether there are any viable de jure objections to Christian belief; I argue that there are not. In Part I (Chs. 1 and 2), I consider and address an initial objection to my project: the objection that there isn’t really any such thing as Christian belief (or at any rate that Christian belief is incoherent) since human concepts cannot apply to a transcendent God. In Part II, I explore, first, the question of whether a viable de jure objection to Christian belief can be developed in terms of justification or rationality (Chs. 3 and 4); after arguing for a negative answer to that question, I turn to the objections offered by Freud, Marx, and Nietzche, objections best understood as the claim that theistic and Christian belief lack warrant (Ch. 5). In Part III, Ch. 6, I address this claim, doing so by presenting a model of how it is that belief in God can have warrant, and even warrant sufficient for knowledge; I call this model the Aquinas/Calvin (or A/C) model, since it draws on the thought of Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. In Ch. 7, I consider the noetic effects of sin, and the way in which the existence of sin throws a monkey wrench into the A/C model. In Chs. 8 and 9, I extend the A/C model in such a way as to deal both with sin and with the full panoply of Christian belief (trinity, incarnation, atonement, resurrection, etc.); the extended A/C model shows how full‐blooded Christian belief (not just theistic belief) can have warrant. After dealing with objections to the A/C model in Ch. 10, I turn in Part IV to potential or actual defeaters for Christian belief – possible reasons to give it up or hold it less firmly. The proposed defeaters I examine relate to projection theories of religious belief (Ch. 11), contemporary historical biblical criticism (Ch. 12), postmodernism and religious pluralism (Ch. 13), and the age‐old problem of evil (Ch. 14); none of these, I argue, presents a serious challenge to the warrant Christian belief can enjoy. (shrink)

Virtually all philosophers agree that for a belief to be epistemically justified, it must satisfy certain conditions. Perhaps it must be supported by evidence. Or perhaps it must be reliably formed. Or perhaps there are some other "good-making" features it must have. But does a belief's justification also require some sort of awareness of its good-making features? The answer to this question has been hotly contested in contemporary epistemology, creating a deep divide among its practitioners. Internalists, who tend to focus (...) on scientific or theoretical beliefs as the ideal, insist that such awareness is required for justification. Externalists, who think children's ordinary beliefs in obvious facts are paradigm cases of justified belief, say it isn't required. Michael Bergmann's book offers a decisive refutation of internalism and a sustained defense of externalism. (shrink)

I defend the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism, on which appearances of all kinds generate at least some justification for belief. I argue that there is no reason for privileging introspection or intuition over perceptual experience as a source of justified belief; that those who deny Phenomenal Conservatism are in a self-defeating position, in that their view cannot be both true and justified; and that thedemand for a metajustification for Phenomenal Conservatism either is an easily met demand, or is an unfair (...) or question-begging one. (shrink)

It is common orthodoxy among internalists and externalists alike that knowledge is lost or defeated in situations involving misleading evidence of a suitable kind. But making sense of defeat has seemed to present a particular challenge for those who reject an internalist justification condition on knowledge. My main aim here is to argue that externalists ought to take seriously a view on which knowledge can be retained even in the face of strong seemingly defeating evidence. As an instructive example, I (...) first discuss whether a theory on which knowledge is belief that is safe from error has the resources for accommodating defeat. I argue that beliefs retained in defeat cases need not be unsafe or true in some accidental way. I then discuss externalist strategies for explaining why we have incorrect intuitions about defeat. The notion of an epistemically reasonable subject plays a central role in my theory. Reasonable subjects adopt general strategies that are good for acquiring true belief and knowledge across a wide range of normal cases, but stubbornly retaining belief in the face of new evidence does not reflect such policies. I argue that though the methods employed by subjects who fail to adjust their beliefs in defeat cases may be perfectly good, they are not good methods to adopt, as their adoption is accompanied by bad dispositions. What emerges is a view on which a subject can know despite being unreasonable, and despite failing to manifest dispositions to know across normal cases. Unreasonable subjects are genuinely criticisable, but like almost anything, knowledge can sometimes be achieved in the absence of a good general strategy. (shrink)

In this clear and provocative account of the epistemology of religious experience, William P. Alston argues that the perception of God—his term for direct experiential awareness of God—makes a major contribution to the grounds of religious belief. Surveying the variety of reported direct experiences of God, Alston demonstrates that a person can be justified in holding certain beliefs about God on the basis of mystical experience.

The primary aim of this book is to understand how seemings relate to justification and whether some version of dogmatism or phenomenal conservatism can be sustained. It also addresses a number of other issues, including the nature of seemings, cognitive penetration, Bayesianism, and the epistemology of morality and disagreement.

Hud Hudson shows that apparently irreconcilable conflicts between science and religion often turn out to be misdescribed battles about negotiable philosophical assumptions. He defends an original Hypertime Hypothesis which reconciles the Christian doctrines of The Fall and Original Sin with reigning scientific orthodoxy.

Skeptical theists endorse the skeptical thesis (which is consistent with the rejection of theism) that we have no good reason for thinking the possible goods we know of are representative of the possible goods there are. In his newest formulation of the evidential arguments from evil, William Rowe tries to avoid assuming the falsity of this skeptical thesis, presumably because it seems so plausible. I argue that his new argument fails to avoid doing this. Then I defend that skeptical thesis (...) against objections, thereby supporting my contention that relying on its falsity is a weakness in an argument. (shrink)

Is belief in God epistemically justified? That's the question at the heart of this volume in the Great Debates in Philosophy series, with Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley each addressing this fundamental question with distinctive arguments from opposing perspectives. The first half of the book contains each philosopher's explanation of his particular view; the second half allows them to directly respond to each other's arguments, in a lively and engaging conversation Offers the reader a one of a kind, interactive discussion (...) Forms part of the acclaimed Great Debates in Philosophy series. (shrink)

This paper develops a challenge to theism. The challenge is to explain why the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-good god should be considered significantly more reasonable than the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-evil god. Theists typically dismiss the evil-god hypothesis out of hand because of the problem of good–there is surely too much good in the world for it to be the creation of such a being. But then why doesn't the problem (...) of evil provide equally good grounds for dismissing belief in a good god? I develop this evil-god challenge in detail, anticipate several replies, and correct errors made in earlier discussions of the problem of good. (shrink)

Reasons for believing that Jesus rose from the dead.

The most interesting thing about sceptical theism is its sceptical component. When sceptical theists use that component in responding to arguments from evil, they think it is reasonable for their non-theistic interlocutors to accept it, even if they don't expect them to accept their theism. This article focuses on that sceptical component. The first section explains more precisely what the sceptical theist's scepticism amounts to and how it is used in response to various sorts of arguments from evil. The next (...) section considers and responds to objections to sceptical theism. It is shown that just as there are non-theists who accept the sceptical theist's scepticism, so also are there theists who reject it. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatism holds, roughly, that if it seems to S that P, then S has evidence for P. I argue for two main conclusions. The first is that phenomenal conservatism is better suited than is proper functionalism to explain how a particular type of religious belief formation can lead to non-inferentially justified religious beliefs. The second is that phenomenal conservatism makes evidence so easy to obtain that the truth of evidentialism would not be a significant obstacle to justified religious belief. (...) A natural objection to phenomenal conservatism is that it makes evidence too easy to obtain, but I argue this objection is mistaken. (shrink)

Skeptical theism is a leading response to the evidential argument from evil against the existence of God. Skeptical theists attempt to block the inference from the existence of inscrutable evils to gratuitous evils by insisting that given our cognitive limitations, it wouldn’t be surprising if there were God-justifying reasons we can’t think of. A well-known objection to skeptical theism is that it opens up a skeptical Pandora’s box, generating implausibly wide-ranging forms of skepticism, including skepticism about the external world and (...) past. This paper looks at several responses to this Pandora’s box objection, including a popular response devised by Beaudoin and Bergmann. I find that all of the examined responses fail. It appears the Pandora’s box objection to skeptical theism still stands. (shrink)

Evil, it is often said, poses a problem for theism, the view that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, "God," for short. This problem is usually called "the problem of evil." But this is a bad name for what philosophers study under that rubric. They study what is better thought of as an argument, or a host of arguments, rather than a problem. Of course, an argument from evil against theism can be both an argument and a (...) problem. Some people realize this for the first time when they assert an argument from evil in print and someone publishes a .reply in which numerous defects and oversights are laid bare for the public eye. And if it turns out that there is a God and He doesn't take kindly to such arguments, then an argument from evil might be a big problem, a very big problem, for one who sincerely propounds it. Typically, however, an argument from evil is not thought to be a problem for the atheist. But if not for the atheist, for whom is an argument from evil a "problem"? (shrink)

The 'parody objection' to the ontological argument for the existence of God advances parallel arguments apparently proving the existence of various absurd entities. I discuss recent versions of the parody objection concerning the existence of 'AntiGod' and the devil, as introduced by Peter Millican and Timothy Chambers. I argue that the parody objection always fails, because any parody is either (i) not structurally parallel to the ontological argument, or (ii) not dialectically parallel to the ontological argument. Moreover, once a parody (...) argument is modified in such a way that it avoids (i) and (ii), it is, ironically, no longer a parody – it is the ontological argument itself. (shrink)