Reformed Epistemology in a Jamesian Perspective

Horizons ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence W. Tilley
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
William James ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
William Alston ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Reformed Epistemology

AbstractThis essay argues that the reformed epistemologists (William Alston, Alvin Plantinga) have not (yet) sustained claims in religious epistemology significantly more extensive than William James did in the Varieties. It argues that even if reformed epistemologists show that religious belief can have a positive epistemic status, their approach may finally lead to relativism (given that religious traditions generate contradictory religious beliefs) because it offers no method for finding which, if any, concrete religious beliefs might be preferable to hold or in which religious practices one should engage, if any, and because it fails to distinguish between original and derived religious belief. I suggest that more attention must be paid to “social epistemology” if religious epistemology is to go significantly beyond James's accomplishments.

scholarly journals Objective, Intersubjective Mystical Relationships: Justification and Reality

Open Theology ◽  
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.

scholarly journals Religious Belief is Not Natural. Why Cognitive Science of Religion Does Not Show That Religious Belief is Trustworthy

Studia Humana ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 34-44
Author(s):  
Hans Van Eyghen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Cognitive Theories ◽  
Theories Of Religion ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
Afterlife Beliefs

Abstract It is widely acknowledged that the new emerging discipline cognitive science of religion has a bearing on how to think about the epistemic status of religious beliefs. Both defenders and opponents of the rationality of religious belief have used cognitive theories of religion to argue for their point. This paper will look at the defender-side of the debate. I will discuss an often used argument in favor of the trustworthiness of religious beliefs, stating that cognitive science of religion shows that religious beliefs are natural and natural beliefs ought to be trusted in the absence of counterevidence. This argument received its most influential defense from Justin Barrett in a number of papers, some in collaboration with Kelly James Clark. I will discuss their version of the argument and argue that it fails because the natural beliefs discovered by cognitive scientists of religion are not the religious beliefs of the major world religions. A survey of the evidence from cognitive science of religion will show that cognitive science does show that other beliefs come natural and that these can thus be deemed trustworthy in the absence of counterevidence. These beliefs are teleological beliefs, afterlife beliefs and animistic theistic beliefs.

The epistemological limits of experience-based exclusive religious belief

2008 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERIK BALDWIN ◽  
MICHAEL THUNE
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
General View ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
Epistemic Criteria

AbstractAlvin Plantinga and other philosophers have argued that exclusive religious belief can be rationally held in response to certain experiences – independently of inference to other beliefs, evidence, arguments, and the like – and thus can be ‘properly basic’. We think that this is possible only until the believer acquires the defeater we develop in this paper, a defeater which arises from an awareness of certain salient features of religious pluralism. We argue that, as a consequence of this defeater, continued epistemic support for exclusive religious belief will require the satisfaction of non-basic epistemic criteria (such as evidence and/or argumentation). But then such belief will no longer be properly basic. If successful, we will have presented a challenge not only to Plantinga's position, but also to the general view (often referred to as ‘reformed epistemology’) according to which exclusive religious belief can be properly basic.

KNOWLEDGE AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF

Think ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (58) ◽  
pp. 39-53
Author(s):  
Maria Rosa Antognazza
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Reformed Epistemology

ABSTRACTIntroductions to epistemology routinely define knowledge as a kind of belief which meets certain criteria. In the first two sections of this article, I discuss this account and its application to religious epistemology by the influential movement known as Reformed Epistemology. In the last section, I argue that the controversial consequences drawn from this account by Reformed Epistemology offer one of the best illustrations of the untenability of a conception of knowledge as a kind of belief. I conclude by sketching an alternative account of cognition which also provides a different framework for religious epistemology.

Quasi-Fideism and Religious Conviction

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 51-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Pritchard
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Religious Conviction ◽  
Religious Convictions ◽  
Important Sense ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
Epistemic Standing

It is argued that standard accounts of the epistemology of religious commitmentfail to be properly sensitive to certain important features of the nature of religious conviction. Once one takes these features of religious conviction seriously, then it becomes clear that we are not to conceive of the epistemology of religious conviction along completely rational lines.But the moral to extract from this is not fideism, or even a more moderate proposal (such as reformed epistemology) that casts the epistemic standing of basic religious beliefs along nonrational lines. Rather, one needs to recognise that in an important sense religious convictions are not beliefs at all, but that this is compatible with the idea that many other religious commitments are beliefs. This picture of the nature of religious commitment is shown to fit snugly with the Wittgensteinian account of hinge commitments, such that all rational belief essentially presupposes certain basic arational hinge commitments, along lines originally suggested by John Henry Newman. We are thus able to marshal a parity-style argument in defence of religious commitment. Although religious belief presupposes basic arational religious convictions, it is not on this score epistemically amiss since all belief presupposes basic arational convictions, or hinge commitments. The resulting view of the epistemology of religious commitment is a position I call quasi-fideism.

scholarly journals Religiosity differently influences moral attitude for robots in the US and Japan

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shogo Ikari ◽  
Kosuke Sato ◽  
Emily Burdett ◽  
Hiroshi Ishiguro ◽  
Jonathan Jong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Consideration ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Moral Attitude ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Moral Attitudes

Researchers have speculated that religious traditions influence an individual's moral attitude and care toward robots. They propose that differences in moral care could be explained by values motivated by religion, anthropocentrism and animism. Here, we empirically examined how moral care for robots is influenced by religious belief and attendance with US and Japanese samples, cultures that are Abrahamic and Shinto-Buddhist traditions respectively (N = 3781). Moral care was higher in Japan and participants with higher religious beliefs had less moral care for robots only in the US. Further, participants who scored low on anthropocentrism and high on animism were more likely to attribute moral care for robots. Anthropocentrism in the US and Animism in Japan had a larger effect compared to the other country. The finding demonstrates how religion could influence moral attitudes for robots, and might suggest the realm of moral consideration could be shaped by cultural traditions.

The Epistemology of Testimony and Religious Belief

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
Epistemology Of Testimony

This chapter presents and evaluates the central issues and views in the epistemology of testimony, with a particular focus on the following: the nature of testimony and testimony-based belief; the question of whether testimonial knowledge is acquired via transmission or generation; the debate between reductionism and non-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony; and the extent to which interpersonal features of testimonial exchanges are relevant to the epistemic status of testimonial beliefs. The final section then considers two central concerns that arise specifically with respect to religious beliefs formed on the basis of testimony: the Argument from Luck and the Argument from Authority.

scholarly journals Is Faith a Path to Knowledge?

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 182-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Fales
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Epistemic Attitude ◽  
Cognitive Faculties

In this paper, I consider whether (religious) faith has any role to play in conferring positive epistemic status to (especially religious) beliefs. I outline several conceptions of faith that have been historically important within Western religious traditions. I then consider what role faith might be supposed to play, so understood, within the framework of internalist and externalist accounts of knowledge. My general conclusion is that, insofar as faith itself is a justified epistemic attitude, it requires justification and acquires that justification only through the regular faculties for contingent truths: sense perception and reason. I also argue, however, that the operations of our cognitive faculties in arriving at epistemic judgments on matters of substance are sufficiently complex, subtle, and often temporally prolonged, to make it exceptionally difficult to reconstruct the cognitive process and to judge whether it meets standards of rationality.

scholarly journals To Believe Is Not to Think: A Cross-Cultural Finding

Open Mind ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Neil Van Leeuwen ◽  
Kara Weisman ◽  
Tanya Marie Luhrmann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religious People ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Diverse Cultures

Abstract Are religious beliefs psychologically different from matter-of-fact beliefs? Many scholars say no: that religious people, in a matter-of-fact way, simply think their deities exist. Others say yes: that religious beliefs are more compartmentalized, less certain, and less responsive to evidence. Little research to date has explored whether lay people themselves recognize such a difference. We addressed this question in a series of sentence completion tasks, conducted in five settings that differed both in religious traditions and in language: the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu. Participants everywhere routinely used different verbs to describe religious versus matter-of-fact beliefs, and they did so even when the ascribed belief contents were held constant and only the surrounding context varied. These findings support the view that people from diverse cultures and language communities recognize a difference in attitude type between religious belief and everyday matter-of-fact belief.

Knowledge, Belief, and God

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Formal Epistemology ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
World Religion ◽  
Fertile Period ◽  
New Developments ◽  
The World ◽  
New Ideas

Recent decades have seen a fertile period of theorizing within mainstream epistemology which has had a dramatic impact on how epistemology is done. Investigations into contextualist and pragmatic dimensions of knowledge suggest radically new ways of meeting skeptical challenges and of understanding the relation between the epistemological and practical environment. New insights from social epistemology and formal epistemology about defeat, testimony, a priority, probability, and the nature of evidence all have a potentially revolutionary effect on how we understand our epistemological place in the world. Religion is the place where such rethinking can potentially have its deepest impact and importance. Yet there has been surprisingly little infiltration of these new ideas into philosophy of religion and the epistemology of religious belief. The present volume incorporates these myriad new developments in mainstream epistemology, and extends these developments to questions and arguments in religious epistemology. The investigations proposed in this volume offer substantial new life, breadth, and sophistication to issues in the philosophy of religion and analytic theology. They pose original questions and shed new light on long-standing issues in religious epistemology; and these developments will in turn generate contributions to epistemology itself, since religious belief provides a vital testing ground for recent epistemological ideas.

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