I argue that psychology and epistemology should posit distinct cognitive attitudes of religious credence and factual belief, which have different etiologies and different cognitive and behavioral effects. I support this claim by presenting a range of empirical evidence that religious cognitive attitudes tend to lack properties characteristic of factual belief, just as attitudes like hypothesis, fictional imagining, and assumption for the sake of argument generally lack such properties. Furthermore, religious credences have distinctive properties of their own. (...) To summarize: factual beliefs are practical setting independent, cognitively govern other attitudes, and are evidentially vulnerable. By way of contrast, religious credences have perceived normative orientation, are susceptible to free elaboration, and are vulnerable to special authority. This theory provides a framework for future research in the epistemology and psychology of religious credence. (shrink)

This paper investigates the socio-technical construction, quality control, and coordination of the credence quality attribute “halal” throughout the halal meat chain. The paper is framed within Actor-Network Theory and economic Conventions Theory. Islamic dietary laws or prescriptions, and how these are translated into production and processing standards using a HACCP-like approach, are discussed. Current halal quality coordination is strongly based on civic and domestic logics in which Muslim consumers prefer transacting with Muslim butchers, that is, individuals of known reputation (...) with similar moral and religious obligations. The HACCP-like approach with identification of critical halal control points, as presented in this paper, fits with the industrial quality convention mechanism and ideally yields guaranteed and trustworthy halal credence quality, eventually marked by a halal meat label. The socio-technical construction of halal credence quality, for example with respect to ritual slaughter, and the quality coordination mechanism aimed at reducing halal quality uncertainty among Muslim consumers, for example through labeling, are identified as key attention points in the future research agenda. (shrink)

Some examples suggest that religious credences respond to evidence. Other examples suggest they are wildly unresponsive. So the examples taken together suggest there is a puzzle about whether descriptive religious attitudes respond to evidence or not. I argue for a solution to this puzzle according to which religious credences are characteristically not responsive to evidence; that is, they do not tend to be extinguished by contrary evidence. And when they appear to be responsive, it is because the (...) agents with those credences are playing what I call The Evidence Game, which in fundamental ways resembles the games of make-believe described by Walton's theory of make-believe. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that faith’s going beyond the evidence need not compromise faith’s epistemic rationality. First, I explain how some of the recent literature on belief and credence points to a distinction between what I call B-evidence and C-evidence. Then, I apply this distinction to rational faith. I argue that if faith is more sensitive to B-evidence than to C-evidence, faith can go beyond the evidence and still be epistemically rational.

This paper examines religious epistemics in relationship to recent defenses of belief-credence dualism among analytic Christian philosophers, connecting what is most plausible and appealing in this proposal to Wittgenstein’s thought on the nature of religious praxis and affectively-engaged language-use. How close or far is Wittgenstein’s thought about faith to the analytic Christian philosophers’ thesis that “beliefs and credences are two epistemic tools used for different purposes”? While I find B-C dualism appealing for multiple reasons, the paper goes (...) on to raise critical concerns about the manner in which it has been applied to the epistemology of religious belief. I argue that this application is at odds with some of Wittgenstein’s best insights, and that it presents a promising but comparatively unbalanced account of religious epistemics. (shrink)

In an earlier issue, I argue (2014) that psychology and epistemology should distinguish religious credence from factual belief. These are distinct cognitive attitudes. Levy (2017) rejects this distinction, arguing that both religious and factual “beliefs” are subject to “shifting” on the basis of fluency and “intuitiveness.” Levy’s theory, however, (1) is out of keeping with much research in cognitive science of religion and (2) misrepresents the notion of factual belief employed in my theory. So his claims don’t (...) undermine my distinction. I conclude by suggesting some approaches to empirically testing our views. (shrink)

[OPEN ACCESS TARGET ARTICLE WITH COMMENTARIES AND RESPONSE] We develop a new model of how human agency-detection capacities and other socio-cognitive biases are involved in forming religious beliefs. Crucially, we distinguish general religious beliefs (such as *God exists*) from personal religious beliefs that directly refer to the agent holding the belief or to her peripersonal time and space (such as *God appeared to _me_ last night*). On our model, people acquire general religious beliefs mostly from their (...) surrounding culture; however, people use agency-intuitions and other low-level experiences to form personal religious beliefs. We call our model the Interactive Religious Experience Model (IREM). IREM inverts received versions of Hyperactive Agency-Detection Device Theory (HADD Theory): instead of saying that agency-intuitions are major causes of religious belief in general, IREM says that general belief in supernatural agents causes people to seek situations that trigger agency-intuitions and other experiences, since these enable one to form personal beliefs about those agents. In addition to developing this model, we (1) present empirical and conceptual difficulties with received versions of HADD Theory, (2) explain how IREM incorporates philosophical work on indexical belief, (3) relate IREM to existing anthropological and psychological research, and (4) propose future empirical research programs based on IREM. (shrink)

When someone says she believes that God exists, is she expressing the same kind of mental state as when she says she thinks that a lake bigger than Lake Michigan exists⎯i.e., does she refer to the same kind of cognitive attitude in both cases? Using evidence from linguistic corpora (Study 1) and behavioral experiments (Studies 2-4), the current work provides evidence that individuals typically use the word “believe” more in conjunction with statements about religious credences and “think” more in (...) conjunction with factual statements, pointing to two different understandings of claims made with these two terms. These patterns do not appear to reflect low-level differences based on the amount of consensus surrounding a particular claim, the extent to which the truth of a particular claim is known to the participant, or linguistic differences between religious and factual statements. We discuss implications of these findings for religious cognition (e.g., as supporting the theory that religious credences are qualitatively distinct from factual beliefs) as well as cognitive processes more broadly. Finally, we relate the present findings to prior theoretical work on differences between factual belief and religious credence. (shrink)

Although much has been written about divine knowledge, and some on divine beliefs, virtually nothing has been written about divine credences. In this essay we comparatively assess four views on divine credences: (1) God has only beliefs, not credences; (2) God has both beliefs and credences; (3) God has only credences, not beliefs; and (4) God has neither credences nor beliefs, only knowledge. We weigh the costs and benefits of these four views and draw connections to current discussions in philosophical (...) theology. (shrink)

Sometimes the cognitive part of the human mind is modelled in a simplified way by degrees of belief. E.g., in philosophy of science and in formal epistemology agents are often identified by their credences in a set of claims. This line of dealing with the individual mind is currently expanded to groups by attempts of finding adequate ways of pooling individual degrees of belief into an overall group credence or, more abstractly speaking, into a collective mind. In this paper, (...) we model religious people’s minds as such a collective mind. Religious people are therein identified with a set of degrees of beliefs containing religious and secular credences. E.g., within a religious context a person may be sure that some statement is true, whereas the same person lacks non-religious support for such a credence and hence may doubt the truth of that statement within a secular context. We will also present two results on the adequacy of this model. (shrink)

Young children routinely display a naturalistic understanding of the world. When asked for explanations, they rarely invoke supernatural or religious explanations even when confronted by puzzling or unexpected phenomena. Nevertheless, depending on the surrounding culture, children are eventually prone to accept God as a creator, to believe in the power of prayer and to expect there to be an afterlife. A plausible interpretation of this dual stance is that children adopt two different cognitive routes to understanding: one grounded in (...) empirical observation and in trusted testimony about the observable world. Based on this route, children gradually build up a common-sense understanding of various natural domains, including the physical, the biological and the psychological. The second route is grounded in children’s early emerging ability to engage in shared pretense. As members of a religious community, children will routinely observe community members engage in activities, such as prayer, which cannot be readily understood in terms of their standard, common-sense framework. Nevertheless, children can charitably interpret prayer as special form of communication, directed at an imagined interlocutor. Cumulative exposure to such belief-based activities is likely to encourage children to transition from charitable interpreters of religious activities to participant believers. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive science of religion (CSR) is beginning to converge on a very interesting thesis—that, given the ordinary features of human minds operating in typical human environments, we are naturally disposed to believe in the existence of gods, among other religious ideas (e.g., seeAtran [2002], Barrett [2004; 2012], Bering [2011], Boyer [2001], Guthrie [1993], McCauley [2011], Pyysiäinen [2004; 2009]). In this paper, we explore whether such a discovery ultimately helps or hurts the atheist position—whether, for example, it (...) lends credence to atheism by explaining away religious belief or whether it actually strengthens some already powerful arguments against atheism in the relevant philosophical literature.We argue that the recent discoveries of CSR hurt, not help, the atheist position—that CSR, if anything, should not give atheists epistemic assurance. (shrink)

In the last decade, analytic epistemologists have engaged in a lively debate about Equal Weight, the claim that you should give the credences of epistemic peers the same consideration as your own credences. In this paper, I explore the implications of the debate about Equal Weight for how we should respond to religious disagreement found in the diversity of models of God. I first claim that one common argument against religious exclusivism and for religious pluralism can be (...) articulated as an Equal Weight argument. I then argue that to avoid this argument, religious exclusivists must reject Equal Weight. Next, I maintain that, while the exclusivist complaint that pluralism is self-undermining is incorrect, exclusivists can rightly object that the pluralist’s Equal Weight argument is self-undermining. Thus both exclusivists and pluralists have an interest in rejecting Equal Weight. My final discussion is speculative: I suggest that the goals of those of pluralist persuasion might be better met by religious permissivism, the view that some forms of both exclusivism and pluralism are rational responses to religious disagreement. (shrink)

This paper explains a fallacy that often arises in theorizing about human minds. I call it the Factual Belief Fallacy. The Fallacy, roughly, involves drawing conclusions about human psychology that improperly ignore the large backgrounds of mostly accurate factual beliefs people have. The Factual Belief Fallacy has led to significant mistakes in both philosophy of mind and cognitive science of religion. Avoiding it helps us better see the difference between factual belief and religious credence; seeing that difference in (...) turn enables us to pose interesting normative questions about various mental states labeled “belief.”. (shrink)

In this paper, I lend credence to the move toward non-reductive religious epistemology by highlighting the systematic failings of Alvin Plantinga’s seminal, religious epistemology when it comes to surmounting the Gettier Problem. Taking Plantinga’s account as archetypal, I argue that we have systematic reasons to believe that no reductive theory of knowledge can viably surmount the Gettier Problem, that the future of religious epistemology lies in non-reductive models of knowledge.

De Cruz and Levy, in their commentaries on Religion as Make-Believe, present distinct questions that can be addressed by clarifying one core idea. De Cruz asks whether one can rationally assess the mental state of religious credence that I theorize. Levy asks why we should not explain the data on religious “belief” merely by positing factual beliefs with religious contents, which happen to be rationally acquired through testimony. To both, I say that having religious credences (...) is p-irrational: a purposeful departure from rational thought and behavior, where the purpose in question is maintaining a group identity. (shrink)

We often assume that religious beliefs are no different in kind from ordinary factual beliefs—that believing in the existence of God or of supernatural entities that hear our prayers is akin to believing that May comes before June. Neil Van Leeuwen shows that, in fact, these two forms of belief are strikingly different. Our brains do not process religious beliefs like they do beliefs concerning mundane reality; instead, empirical findings show that religious beliefs function like the imaginings (...) that guide make-believe play. -/- Van Leeuwen argues that religious belief—which he terms religious “credence”—is best understood as a form of imagination that people use to define the identity of their group and express the values they hold sacred. When a person pretends, they navigate the world by consulting two maps: the first represents mundane reality, and the second superimposes the features of the imagined world atop the first. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, and anthropological evidence, Van Leeuwen posits that religious communities operate in much the same way, consulting a factual-belief map that represents ordinary objects and events and a religious-credence map that accords these objects and events imagined sacred and supernatural significance. -/- It is hardly controversial to suggest that religion has a social function, but Religion as Make-Believe breaks new ground by theorizing the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Once we recognize that our minds process factual and religious beliefs in fundamentally different ways, we can gain deeper understanding of the complex individual and group psychology of religious faith. [Abstract writing credit: book editor Andrew Kinney, HUP]. (shrink)

Maarten Boudry and Jerry Coyne have written a piece, forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology, called “Disbelief in Belief,” in which they criticize my recent paper “Religious credence is not factual belief” (2014, Cognition 133). Here I respond to their criticisms, the thrust of which is that we shouldn’t distinguish religious credence from factual belief, contrary to what I say. I respond that their picture of religious psychology undermines our ability to distinguish common religious people from (...) fanatics. My response will appear in the same issue as their paper. (shrink)

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 US, 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. (shrink)

Religious people seem to believe things that range from the somewhat peculiar to the utterly bizarre. Or do they? According to a new paper by Neil Van Leeuwen, religious “credence” is nothing like mundane factual belief. It has, he claims, more in common with fictional imaginings. Religious folk do not really “believe”—in the ordinary sense of the word—what they profess to believe. Like fictional imaginings, but unlike factual beliefs, religious credences are activated only within specific (...) settings. We argue that Van Leeuwen’s thesis contradicts a wealth of data on religiously motivated behavior. By and large, the faithful genuinely believe what they profess to believe. Although many religions openly embrace a sense of mystery, in general this does not prevent the attribution of beliefs to religious people. Many of the features of religious belief that Van Leeuwen alludes to, like invulnerability to refutation and incoherence, are characteristic of irrational beliefs in general and actually betray... (shrink)

Since religious experiences are dependent on religious ‘truths’, and religious ‘truths’ are usually beyond scientific investigation, religious beliefs vary a lot and each claims credence of itself. Religious experiences leading to religious conversions or religious conversions due to conviction of certain religious beliefs are often observable. Whether a particular religious belief is true or false is dependent on the kind of criteria used for the measurement. Not all religions accept Logic (...) as criteria, though. (shrink)

This is a commentary on Neil Van Leeuwen's Religion as make‐believe focusing on the normative aspects of this book. According to Van Leeuwen, religious credences are not factual beliefs, and they are held to different standards of rationality than factual beliefs. Hence, religious believers are able to track and represent those states of affairs that govern their practical lives while also holding views that deviate significantly from it, such as divine omnipotence. Here, I examine whether this reasonable compartmentalization (...) in religious believers holds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ahmadis: Community, Gender, and Politics in a Muslim Society. By Antonio Gualtieri. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004. Pp. xvi + 192. Hardcover $65.00. Paper Cdn $24.95 / U.S. $19.95.American Knees. By Shawn Wong. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2005. Pp. xxi + 229. Paper $14.95.The Art of Worldly Wisdom. By Baltasar Gracian and translated by Joseph Jacobs. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. (...) xiii + 114. Paper $5.95.Bashō's Journey: The Literary Prose of Matsuo Bashō. Translated by David Landis Barnhill. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xvii + 191. Hardcover $59.50. Paper $17.95.Bringing the Gods to Mind: Mantra and Ritual in Early Indian Sacrifice. By Laurie L. Patton. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Pp. xv + 289. Hardcover $49.95/£32.50.Buddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious Others. By Kristin Beise Kiblinger. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005. Pp. viii + 145. Hardcover $89.95.A Chinese Ethics for the New Century: The Ch'ien Mu Lectures in History and Culture, and Other Essays on Science and Confucian Ethics. By Donald J. Munro. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005. Pp. xlv + 158. Hardcover $33.00.Chinese Theories of Reading and Writing: A Route to Hermeneutics and Open Poetics. By Ming Dong Gu. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xiv + 334. Hardcover $85.00.A Dictionary of Cantonese Slang: The Language of Hong Kong Movies, Street Gangs, and City Life. By Christopher Hutton and Kingsley Bolton. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Pp. xxiv + 492. Paper $28.00.Ghazālī and the Poetics of Imagination. By Ebrahim Moosa. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Pp. xiii + 349. Hardcover $59.95. Paper $22.50.Going Forth: Visions of Buddhist Vinaya. Edited by William M. Bodiford. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Pp. x + 317. Hardcover $48.00.The Harem: Inside the Grand Seraglio of the Turkish Sultans. By N. M. Penzer. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. 277. Paper $14.95.Ideals of the East: The Spirit of Japanese Art. By Kakuzo Okakura. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. xiv + 106. Paper $5.95. [End Page 365]An Illustrated Chinese Materia Medica. By Jing-Nuan Wu. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 706. Price not given.Jews and Arabs: A Concise History of Their Social and Cultural Relations. By S. D. Goitein. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. xv + 263. Paper $12.95.The Logic of Nothingness: A Study of Nishida Kitarō. By Robert J. J. Wargo. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Pp xi + 241. Paper $25.00.The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. By Raghavan N. Iyer. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 449. Paper Rs 520.00.Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. By T. K. Seung. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. Pp. xxviii + 370. Hardcover $83.00. Paper $27.95.Of Guilds, Companies, Corporations, and Governance: A Conceptual Sketch. By Leonardo R. Silos. Makati City, Philippines: Asian Institute of Management, 2005. Pp. xvi + 238. Price not given.The Path to Rome. By Hilaire Belloc. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. ix + 251. Paper $12.95.The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgātā : A Study based on the Evaluation of the Commentaries of Śamkara, Rāmānuja and Madhva. By S. M. Srinivasa Chari. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2005. Pp. xxvi + 294. Hardcover Rs 575.00.The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. By Kalyan Sen Gupta. Burlington, VT: Ash-gate Publishing Company, 2005. Pp. ix + 103. Hardcover $79.95.The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse. By Thomas Michael. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xi + 170. Hardcover $60.00. Paper $21.95.Three Mountains and Seven Rivers: Prof. Musashi Tachikawa's Felicitation Volume. Edited by Shoun Hino and Toshihiro Wada. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 2004. Pp. xx + 903. Hardcover Rs. 1800.The Unity of Mystical Traditions: The Transformation of Consciousness in Tibetan and German Mysticism. By Randall Studstill. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. Pp. xii + 304. Hardcover @89/$127.00.Writing the World: On Globalization. Edited by David... (shrink)

Van Leeuwen’s Religion as Make-Believe, A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity argues that religious and political beliefs are fundamentally different from mundane, factual beliefs and represent a cognitive attitude more akin to imagining. To ground this difference, Van Leeuwen proposes four principles defining factual beliefs: ‘involuntariness’ mandates that people cannot choose what they believe; ‘no compartmentalization’ says that factual – but not religious – beliefs guide behavior in all domains; ‘cognitive governance’ requires that inferences be readily (...) drawn from factual beliefs; ‘evidential vulnerability' entails that beliefs are revised given contradictory evidence. While factual beliefs are supposed to meet these standards, Van Leeuwen marshals evidence that religious and tribal beliefs – or “credences” – fail to obey these four principles. In this commentary, I argue that beliefs – both factual and religious – are often much more complicated than Van Leeuwen assumes. This complexity makes perfect conformity to the four principles unlikely, even for factual beliefs. I review Van Leeuwen’s evidence for credences and suggest that this evidence is compatible with the null hypothesis: that religious beliefs are simply beliefs. (shrink)

Religious fundamentalism remains a significant force in global politics and religion. Despite a range of problems arising from fundamentalism, the beliefs fundamentalists hold can seem quite reasonable. This paper considers whether, in fact, fundamentalist beliefs are rational by drawing on recent ideas in contemporary epistemology. The paper presents a general theory of fundamentalist beliefs in terms of their propositional content and the high credence levels attributed to them. It then explores the way these beliefs are both acquired and (...) retained by applying ideas from the social epistemology of echo chambers and group belief. The paper then considers three accounts of the rationality of belief: evidentialist, reliabilist, and virtue-theoretic. It is argued that fundamentalist beliefs can be reasonable on evidentialist standards, but are nevertheless still problematic on reliabilist and virtue standards, since they are formed in environments that are not truth-conducive and which cultivate intellectual vice. (shrink)

Jung’s individuation process, the central process of human development, relies heavily on several core philosophical and psychological ideas including the unconscious, complexes, the archetype of the Self, and the religious function of the psyche. While working to find empirical evidence of the psyche’s religious function, Jung studied a variety of subjects including the Eastern liberatory traditions of Buddhism and Patañjali’s Classical Yoga. In these traditions, Jung found substantiation of his ideas on psychospiritual development. Although Jung’s career in soul (...) work was lengthy, throughout, he aimed to steer clear of metaphysics. Patañjali’s metaphysics, on the other hand, are straightforward, and his ontological commitments are evident. Because Jung’s ontological commitments were not explicit, his theories, when seen through Patañjali’s lens, confuse ontological questions with epistemic issues. As a result, when comparing the Jungian and Patañjalian notions of the Self, Jung’s insightful ideas seem to be constructed upon a considerably shaky foundation. Yet, utilizing the exceptionally consistent ontological and epistemological commitments of Patañjali Yoga, as well as the objective measures of affective neuroscience, brings credence to the innate aspects and instinctual nature of Jung’s archetype of the Self, and assists in answering the question of whether the archetype is innate or emergent. (shrink)

Doxastic voluntarism is the thesis that our beliefs are subject to voluntary control. While there’s some controversy as to what “voluntary control” amounts to (see 1.2), it’s often understood as direct control: the ability to bring about a state of affairs “just like that,” without having to do anything else. Most of us have direct control over, for instance, bringing to mind an image of a pine tree. Can one, in like fashion, voluntarily bring it about that one believes a (...) specific proposition? Doxastic voluntarists hold that, at least in some circumstances—such as when the evidence is ambiguous—we can. Doxastic involuntarists, in contrast, maintain that we cannot. Some involuntarists hold that the concept of belief itself precludes the possibility of believing voluntarily. Others hold that the impossibility of voluntary belief is a contingent psychological fact. Historically, the issue of doxastic voluntarism has been connected to how many think about religious commitment: a prominent view of faith is that it is a voluntary decision to believe. Furthermore, the issue of voluntarism has also been viewed as having bearing on fundamental questions in epistemology. For example, are epistemic norms duties to believe in certain ways? Are there practical or moral reasons to believe? If the answer to either question is “yes,” it seems some measure of voluntary doxastic control is required. -/- In section 1, we expand on the definition of doxastic voluntarism, and survey various kinds of control (e.g. direct, indirect, long-range) and the doxastic attitudes we might control (e.g. outright belief, withholding, credences). In section 2, we discuss a number of historical views on doxastic voluntarism. In section 3, we survey motivations for rejecting doxastic voluntarism. There are two general strategies: arguments that appeal to psychological considerations, and conceptual arguments regarding the nature of belief. In section 4, we survey five approaches to defending voluntarism: those that appeal to epistemic permissivism, doxastic compatibilism, skepticism, one-off considerations, and non-standard views of belief. In section 5, we cover empirical work on doxastic voluntarism. The last two sections discuss two implications of voluntarism. In section 6, we discuss voluntarism’s implications for the ethics of belief, and in section 7, we discuss issues at the intersection of voluntarism and religious faith. (shrink)

Although expected utility theory has proven a fruitful and elegant theory in the finite realm, attempts to generalize it to infinite values have resulted in many paradoxes. In this paper, we argue that the use of John Conway's surreal numbers shall provide a firm mathematical foundation for transfinite decision theory. To that end, we prove a surreal representation theorem and show that our surreal decision theory respects dominance reasoning even in the case of infinite values. We then bring our theory (...) to bear on one of the more venerable decision problems in the literature: Pascal's Wager. Analyzing the wager showcases our theory's virtues and advantages. To that end, we analyze two objections against the wager: Mixed Strategies and Many Gods. After formulating the two objections in the framework of surreal utilities and probabilities, our theory correctly predicts that (1) the pure Pascalian strategy beats all mixed strategies, and (2) what one should do in a Pascalian decision problem depends on what one's credence function is like. Our analysis therefore suggests that although Pascal's Wager is mathematically coherent, it does not deliver what it purports to, a rationally compelling argument that people should lead a religious life regardless of how confident they are in theism and its alternatives. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with evidentialism, and with the bearing of evidentialism on the question of whether theistic belief is epistemically justified. The first task is to determine how evidentialism is best formulated, and answering that question requires considering both the concept of evidence, and the idea of epistemically basic, or non‐inferentially justified beliefs. Given a promising account of evidentialism, I then consider two important objections, one of which claims that beliefs always rest upon presuppositions that cannot themselves be justified, (...) and the other of which claims that evidentialism entails skepticism, and must therefore be rejected. After answering those objections, I conclude by briefly considering the implications of evidentialism for religious belief in general, and for theism in particular. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the objections to both doxastic volitionism and doxastic voluntarism fail. Objections to doxastic volitionism and doxastic voluntarism assume a generic notion of belief, a notion which covers both beliefs about things which we know or think we know or are evident to us, as well as beliefs which have some degree of credence but are not clearly evident to the subject. The generic notion of belief includes both sorts of beliefs, but the position (...) against doxastic volitionism is supported only by appeal to beliefs about things which are evident or that we think we know. However, by showing that beliefs which we think we know to be true are not voluntary, the objections leaves open the question whether belief as such is voluntary. Contrary to the opponents of doxastic volitionism, I will show that if what we are after is a generic notion of belief, it ought to be construed as holding true; and if this is what constitutes belief as such, the arguments against doxastic volitionism for faith beliefs fail. The strongest argument against doxastic voluntarism is an evidentialist argument concerning the ethics of belief. That argument is basically that even if choosing belief is psychologically possible, evidentialism rules it out as epistemically irresponsible. In the last section of this article, I will argue that if religious belief is constituted by true propositions of the faith, the evidentialist objection to doxastic voluntarism fails. (shrink)

Belief in the divine origin of the universe began to wane most markedly in the nineteenth century, when scientific accounts of creation by natural law arose to challenge traditional religious doctrines. Most of the credit - or blame - for the victory of naturalism has generally gone to Charles Darwin and the biologists who formulated theories of organic evolution. Darwinism undoubtedly played the major role, but the supporting parts played by naturalistic cosmogonies should also be acknowledged. Chief among these (...) was the nebular hypothesis proposed by Pierre Simon Laplace in 1796, which explained the origin of the solar system as a natural development over extended periods of time. Ronald Numbers focuses on Laplace's theory as it affected American scientific thought. he first traces the history of Laplace's cosmogony chronologically, from its European inception to its demise about 1900. the last three chapters explore some of the theological and scientific consequences resulting from the acceptance of this cosmogony. Most significant was the change in the status of supernatural doctrine. When the nebular hypothesis lost credence at the end of the nineteenth century, those who had before tried to accommodate natural theory with supernatural doctrine no longer felt compelled to do so when faced with succeeding theories. The nebular hypothesis, it seems, had established natural law in the heavens. (shrink)

The relevance and value of oral history practices and principles and its impact on community history gives credence to its relationship with the liberation struggle. The liberation struggle heroines that formed the cohort of interviewees for this research were members of the South African Indian community. This interview- research process provides a platform that allows the veteran South African female of Indian Heritage to reflect almost 50 years later and be a part of the celebration, preservation and promotion of (...) struggle narratives. The women who were interviewed for this research shed light on celebrating political achievements, whilst remembering and recalling the educational, material and economic assistance from international sources. Furthermore, these women referred to the preservation of South Africa’s unique heritage as, South Africa is united in its diversity. Promoting the values of the liberation struggle by sharing her anecdotes, honouring the cadres, relating experiences, retelling tales and sometimes possibly reliving military camp days completed the oral history interview process and eventually added to the body of knowledge that already exists and partially filled the gaps that exist.Contribution: From a multidisplinary religious perspective, this article contributes to the historical and social-cultural discourse on liberation theology within a paradigm in which the intersection of social sciences and humanities generates a transdisciplinary contested discourse. (shrink)

The writings collected in this volume make an important addition to The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. They lend credence to Bentham's claim that his ideas were appropriate `for the use of all nations and all governments professing liberal opinions'. The essays, dating mainly from late 1822 and early 1823, are based exclusively on manuscripts, many of which have not been previously published. -/- Turning his attention towards the Mediterranean basin, Bentham here attempts to legislate for one Islamic state, (...) and offers advice to another in the process of throwing off Islamic rule. The Writings for Tripoli include the famous `Securities against Misrule', in which Bentham draws up a constitutional charter with an accompanying explanation of its provisions. He also discusses the social, political, and religious institutions of the country, and proposes a scheme for the introduction of constitutional reform both there and in the other Barbary states. The Writings for Greece include a rare commentary on the first Greek constitution of 1822, and advice and warnings to the Greek legislators against the temptation of `sinister appetites'. The main theme in both groups of writings is the efficacy of representative institutions and the publicity of official actions in preventing the abuse of government power. (shrink)

The isolated mention of the existence of a powerful Jewish polity in the Horn of Africa by Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century AD has generally been given such credence by the twentieth-century orientalistes that it is often considered the first mention of the people later to be known as Falasha. This short passage has indeed engendered a large amount of scholarly literature, which has partially obscured the wider historical and geographical context to which it refers (...) and in which it was produced. Beyond his formulation of the hypothesis of this Jewish polity, which, it will be argued, probably never existed, this article suggests that Benjamin's Jewish viewpoint has much more to tell us about the regional scene than has been recognized. First, analyzed as an itinerary, Benjamin's text sheds new light on the trading routes of the time. Second, the comparison of this text with other sources from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries provides new perspectives on the religious, political, and economic intricacies of the time, a context in which, it is suggested, Benjamin's confusion about the identity of the polity he describes makes sense. Finally, while it probably does not constitute a reflection on a political entity that existed in actual fact, Benjamin's narrative, with all its ambiguities, may be considered a rather faithful mirror of the social complexity of the communities near the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, which are at the crossroads of several worlds. (shrink)

Whether Appiah’s concession in [The Illusions of Race, 1992] that there are no races can stand vis-a-vis Masolo’s submission in “African Philosophy and the Postcolonial: some Misleadingions about Identity” that identity is impossible, it is worthy to note that much of what is entailed in human societies tend toward the exaltation and protection of self-interest. Self-interest, as it is related to particular or individual entities, to a great extent, presupposes the ontology of different races and identities. Paul Taylor in “Appiah’s (...) Uncompleted Argument: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reality of Race,” to begin with, asserts that races and identity struggles are real entities as individuals’: where this can be said to aid and abet racial differences. Though, there are those who lend credence to Appiah’s and Masolo’s explications like Hountondji and Gyekye; however, it is noteworthy that philosophers like Du Bois, Nkrumah, Fanon, Mandela, Senghor, Hallen and Cabral who, in one way or the other, lend credence to Taylor’s claim, could not have said so without taking into consideration, the colonial and anthropological experiences which has, in one way or the other, has affected Africa and Africans. Despite the latter, certain flaws like the failure to acknowledge the utility and global importance of human race or family, and the failure to recognize the distinctiveness of each existing race, tribe or ethnicities in a diverse political, religious, and culture-biased world, are inherent in Taylor’s, Appiah’s and Masolo’s views coupled with those who lend credence to their views. In this study, nevertheless, it is conceded that it is not enough, as a derivative of Appiah’s skepticism about race and identity, to gesture at racial and identity concerns while using logical incoherence, globality, methodological separatism and cosmopolitan traits to undermine the relevance of identity which is the soul of the postcolonial quest for a distinct African race or black philosophy. Keywords : Race, Identity, Black/African Philosophy, Global Politics, Morality. (shrink)

Clinical and neuroscientific studies of Buddhist meditation practices are frequent topics in the news media, and have helped certain practices achieve mainstream cultural status. Buddhists have reacted by using these studies in a number of ways. Some deploy the studies to show the compatibility of science and Buddhism, often using the authority of science to lend credence to Buddhism. Other Buddhists use meditation studies to demonstrate the superiority of Buddhism over science. Within inter-Buddhist debates, meditation studies are used to (...) argue for changes in practice or belief, but also sometimes to reinforce certain traditional practices. Benjamin Zeller's threefold categorization of religious groups’ attitudes toward science and José Ignacio Cabezón's three ideal types of relationships between Buddhism and science contribute to analysis of Buddhist uses of scientific studies of meditation. (shrink)