scholarly journals Faith and Reason

2017 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 101-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Pritchard
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
Rational Evaluation

AbstractA novel account of the rationality of religious belief is offered, called quasi-fideism. According to this proposal, we are neither to think of religious belief as completely immune to rational evaluation nor are we to deny that it involves fundamental commitments which are arational. Moreover, a parity argument is presented to the effect that religious belief is no different from ordinary rational belief in presupposing such fundamental arational commitments. This proposal is shown to be rooted in Wittgenstein's remarks on hinge commitments in On Certainty, remarks which it is claimed were in turn influenced by John Henry Newman's treatment of the rationality of religious belief in An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent.

Faith and Reason: A Response to Duncan Pritchard

Philosophy ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 92 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-247
Author(s):  
Roberto di Ceglie
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Duncan Pritchard ◽  
Theology And Philosophy

AbstractIn a recent essay Duncan Pritchard argues that there is no fundamental epistemological distinction between religious belief and ordinary or non-religious belief. Both of them – so he maintains in the footsteps of Wittgenstein's On certainty – are ultimately grounded on a-rational commitments, namely, commitments unresponsive to rational criteria. I argue that, while this view can be justified theologically, it cannot be advanced philosophically as Pritchard assumes.I offer an account of Aquinas's reflection on faith and reason to show that the theologian – not the philosopher – is entitled to deal with a-rational commitments, because the truths of faith can be seen as simply intellectual – like the rational statements considered by the philosopher – but also as decisions made by way of divine grace. I also suggest that Pritchard's thesis may be re-proposed on a new basis, if Aquinas's theological stance were reinterpreted so as to point out unexpected connections between theology and philosophy.

Faith and the Existence of God: Faith and Rationality

1988 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 135-143
Author(s):  
D. C. Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Existence Of God

In the previous lecture Professor Swinburne discussed arguments for the existence of God. I do not propose to put forward arguments for the non-existence of God, precisely. Rather I want to discuss the view that the whole enterprise of putting forward arguments for the existence of God is misguided. Moreover, I hold that it distorts the nature of religious belief. This in turn raises the question of the rationality of religious belief. A belief that cannot be based on argument, however broadly understood, does not seem to be a rational belief. Is religious belief, therefore, irrational, contrary to reason? We shall see. This, at least, is my programme.

Richard Whately

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geertjan Zuijdwegt
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Academic Support ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Richard Whately ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Intellectual Independence

Richard Whately (1787-1863) is an intriguing figure in John Henry Newman’s development. Through his mentoring and academic support, he taught the gifted young Newman to think for himself. But intellectual independence came at a price. After a close relationship in the mid-1820s, Newman began to steer a course of his own. In the tumultuous early 1830s, their friendship foundered, as they clashed over key theological issues: the authority of the church, the doctrine of the Trinity, the nature of revelation, and the reasonableness of religious belief. Newman had come to think that Whately's theology endangered orthodox Christianity. This conviction shaped his later opposition to other Oriel Noetics, who thought like Whately. Despite their conflicts, Newman drew on Whately's work in logic and rhetoric to formulate his own theory of the relation between faith and reason.

Leaps and Circles: Kierkegaard and Newman on Faith and Reason

1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Jamie Ferreira
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Faith And Reason

Søren Kierkegaard (in the Climacus writings) and John Henry Newman have starkly opposed formulations of the relation between faith and reason. In this essay I focus on a possible convergence in their respective understandings of the transition to religious belief or faith, as embodied in metaphors they use for a qualitative transition. I explore the ways in which attention to the legitimate dimension of discontinuity highlighted by the Climacan metaphor of the ‘leap’ can illuminate Newman's use of the metaphor of a ‘polygon inscribed in a circle’, as well as the ways in which Newman's metaphor can illuminate the dimension of continuity operative in the Climacan appreciation of qualitative transition.

scholarly journals Dobradiças, Vertigem Epistémica e Moralidade

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (53) ◽  
pp. 125-140
Author(s):  
Nuno Venturinha ◽  
Keyword(s):  
On Certainty ◽  
The Third ◽  
Inexact Knowledge ◽  
Hinge Epistemology ◽  
Hinge Propositions ◽  
Rational Evaluation

This paper explores central themes of Duncan Pritchard’s epistemology intimately related to the Wittgensteinian idea of a “hinge epistemology”. The first section calls attention to the eminently empirical character of our “hinges”. The second section focuses on Pritchard’s notion of “arational hinge commitments”, more specifically his distinction between the pair “über hinge commitments”/“über hinge propositions” and the pair “personal hinge commitments”/“personal hinge propositions”. The third section brings to the discussion Timothy Williamson’s view of “inexact knowledge” and examines another pair of notions introduced by Pritchard, namely “antiskeptical hinge commitments”/“antiskeptical hinge propositions”. I conclude with a reevaluation of the diagnosis made by Pritchard that, confronted with a sceptical scenario, our “epistemic angst” can be surpassed if we follow Wittgenstein’s teaching in On Certainty about the “structure of rational evaluation”, but that an “epistemic vertigo” can never be ultimately dispelled. My argument is that in a moral scenario there is no room for vertigo.

Phronesis and Religious Belief

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-244
Author(s):  
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Virtue Theory ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Regulative Idea

This chapter outlines a theory of rationality integral to virtue theory suggested by a remark by Hilary Putnam that reason is both immanent and transcendent. It is immanent in that it is not to be found outside human language games, cultures, and institutions, but it is also a regulative idea that is used to criticize the conduct of all activities and institutions. The chapter proposes three corollaries of the immanence and transcendence of reason and some constraints that should be respected in defining a rational belief. These proposals are intended to help settle disputes about the rationality or epistemic praiseworthiness of culture-specific beliefs, including beliefs distinctive of a particular religion. The discussion in the chapter is at odds with the approach of Plantinga on the defense of the epistemic status of Christian belief.

Wittgensteinian Epistemology, Epistemic Vertigo, and Pyrrhonian Skepticism

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-192
Author(s):  
Duncan Pritchard
Keyword(s):  
On Certainty ◽  
Cartesian Skepticism ◽  
The Core ◽  
Pyrrhonian Skepticism ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Rational Evaluation

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein offers a radical conception of the structure of rational evaluation, such that all rational evaluations are essentially local in that they necessarily occur relative to arational hinge certainties. Support is canvassed for the following claims: (1) that a Wittgensteinian epistemology, while the antidote to a certain formulation of Cartesian skepticism, is entirely compatible, including in spirit, with Pyrrhonian skepticism; (2) that the philosophical quietism which provides the wider context for Wittgenstein’s epistemology is very much in keeping with the core nature of Pyrrhonian skeptical techniques; and (3) that a Wittgensteinian epistemology sits very well alongside a particular way of thinking about Pyrrhonian skepticism such that it is primarily directed at our specifically theoretical commitments. As we will see, a key element to understanding how the Wittgensteinian line against Cartesian skepticism can be allied to a Pyrrhonian skepticism is the notion of epistemic vertigo.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL DISJUNCTIVISM: NEO-WITTGENSTEINIAN AND MODERATE NEO-MOOREAN

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-457
Author(s):  
Joshua Stuchlik
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
Radical Skepticism ◽  
Duncan Pritchard ◽  
Epistemological Disjunctivism ◽  
Epistemic Modesty ◽  
Rational Evaluation

ABSTRACTDuncan Pritchard proposes a biscopic solution to the problem of radical skepticism, which consists in epistemological disjunctivism and a theory about the limits of rational evaluation inspired by Wittgenstein's On Certainty. According to the latter theory, we cannot have rationally grounded knowledge of the denials of radical skeptical hypotheses, a consequence that Pritchard finds attractive insofar as he thinks that claims to know the falsity of radical skeptical hypotheses are epistemically immodest. I argue that there is room for a neo-Moorean to dispute Pritchard's argument for the Wittgensteinian proposal and I raise some doubts about its underlying motivation. Finally, I put forward an alternative, which I call “moderate neo-Moorean epistemological disjunctivism.” While this theory contends that we possess rationally grounded anti-skeptical knowledge, it also allows for a degree of epistemic modesty, by conceding that perceptual knowledge never amounts to knowledge that is absolutely certain.

Rationality and Religious Belief

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis P. Pojman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Reason And Faith ◽  
Articles Of Faith

In debate on faith and reason two opposing positions have dominated the field. The first position asserts that faith and reason are commensurable and the second position denies that assertion. Those holding to the first position differ among themselves as to the extent of the compatibility between faith and reason, most adherents relegating the compatibility to the ‘preambles of faith’ (e.g. the existence of God and his nature) over against the ‘articles of faith’ (e.g. the doctrine of the incarnation). Few have maintained complete harmony between reason and faith, i.e. a religious belief within the realm of reason alone. The second position divides into two sub-positions: (1) that which asserts that faith is opposed to reason (which includes such unlikely bedfellows as Hume and Kierkegaard), placing faith in the area of irrationality; and (2) that which asserts that faith is higher than reason, is transrational. Calvin and Barth assert that a natural theology is inappropriate because it seeks to meet unbelief on its own ground (ordinary human reason). Revelation, however, is ‘self-authenticating’, ‘carrying with it its own evidence’.1 We may call this position the ‘transrationalist’ view of faith. Faith is not so much against reason as above it and beyond its proper domain. Actually, Kierkegaard shows that the two sub-positions are compatible. He holds both that faith is above reason (superior to it) and against reason (because reason has been affected by sin). The irrationalist and transrationalist positions are sometimes hard to separate in the incommensurabilist's arguments. At least, it seems that faith gets such a high value that reason comes off looking not simply inadequate but culpable. To use reason where faith claims the field is not only inappropriate but irreverent or faithless.

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.

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