Is Balancing a Method of Rational Justification sui generis?

David Hume’s critique of religion reveals what seems to be a vacillation in his commitment to an argument-based paradigm of legitimate believing. On the one hand, Hume assumes such a traditional (argumentbased) model of rational justification of beliefs in order to point to the weakness of some classical arguments for religious belief (e.g., the design argument), to chastise the believer for extrapolating to a conclusion which outstrips its evidential warrant. On the other hand, Hume, ‘mitigated’ or naturalist skeptic that he is, at other times rejects an argumentbased paradigm of certainty and truth, and so sees as irrelevant the traditional or ‘regular’ model of rational justification; he places a premium on instinctive belief, as both unavoidable and (usually) more reliable than reasoning. On this view, a forceful critique of religion would have to fault it, not for failing to meet criteria of rational argument (failing to proportion belief to the evidence), but (as Hume sometimes seems to) for failing to be the right sort of instinct.

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Objective, Intersubjective Mystical Relationships: Justification and Reality

Open Theology ◽

10.1515/opth-2019-0011 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 198-216

Author(s):

Michael Barber

Keyword(s):

Religious Experience ◽

Alvin Plantinga ◽

Rational Justification ◽

William Alston ◽

Religious Traditions ◽

Experience Of God ◽

Personal Character ◽

Bodily Presence ◽

Phenomenological Account ◽

Analytic Philosopher

Abstract Amplifying the idea of religious experience as occurring within an encompassing “religious province of meaning” and developing the personal character of the experience of God in the Abrahamic religious traditions, this paper argues that mystics in those traditions experience God “objectively.” Their experience of God is that of experiencing God as what Alfred Schutz called a “Consociate,” despite the lack of God’s bodily presence. Such a phenomenological account of religious experience converges with the description by analytic philosopher William Alston of religious experience as an objectively given, non-sensual perception of God, even though the personal Consociate model is preferable to the perceptual one, given the Abrahamic traditions. Conversely, Alston and Alvin Plantinga show how ascending levels of rational justification of religious experience are possible with reference to the experiential level, and such levels can be accommodated within the Schutzian “theoretical province of meaning” in its collaboration with the religious province. Both the Consociate and Schelerian/personalist accounts of God resist any explaining away of religious experience as mere phantasy, and the religious finite province of meaning provides a more comprehensive explanation of religious experience than either Alston’s or Plantinga’s approaches. However, the strategy of envisioning religious experience as taking place within a finite province of meaning is more noetic in character than Scheler’s view of an eidetically elaborated noematic absolute reality that precedes the rise of consciousness itself and that counterbalances the noetic portrayal of religious experience.

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Kierkegaard and Rational Justification of Morality -A Critique of Macintyre’s Account

Balkan Journal of Philosophy ◽

10.5840/bjp20113118 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 75-80

Author(s):

Bojan Blagojević ◽

Keyword(s):

Rational Justification

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Normativity and Reason

Journal of Moral Philosophy ◽

10.1177/1740468107083252 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

pp. 406-431 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Thomas Pink

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Natural Law ◽

Moral Obligation ◽

Force Model ◽

Moral Obligations ◽

Rational Justification ◽

Recent Philosophy ◽

Rational Demand

AbstractMoral obligation is a demand of reason—a demanding kind of rational justification. How to understand this rational demand? Much recent philosophy, as in the work of Scanlon, takes obligatoriness to be a reason-giving feature of an action. But the paper argues that moral obligatoriness should instead be understood as a mode of justificatory support—as a distinctive justificatory force of demand. The paper argues that this second model of obligation, the Force model, was central to the natural law tradition in ethics, is truer to everyday intuition about obligation, and also changes our understanding of the problem of moral rationality. A new account is given of why it might be irrational to breach moral obligations. The Force model also sheds new light on moral responsibility, our responsibility for meeting moral obligations. Moral obligation is a standard of reason; but moral responsibility is shown to involve far more than ordinary rational appraisability, precisely because moral obligation involves a distinctive justificatory force of demand—one which specifically governs how we act.

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