Abstract

In this dissertation, I defend the idea that religious belief admits of a form of justification that I call non-cognitive. Roughly, a belief is non-cognitively justified if the belief is not known to be false, it can be shown that the expected utility of the belief is great, and one holds the belief on the basis of . ;I begin with a consideration of Pascal's wager argument. I analyze Pascal's argument in terms of the modern theory of expected utility, and I defend the argument against several key objections. ;Kant's moral argument is examined next. I consider three interpretations of his argument. According to Wood, the belief that God exists is necessary for the motivation one needs to fulfill one's moral obligations. Session's analysis of Kant is similar, but he argues that the belief that God exists is a means to a goal that we are rationally obligated to pursue. Adams relaxes the requirements for non-cognitive justification somewhat by not requiring that there be an intellectual or moral obligation to pursue the highest good. ;In a chapter on James, the central thesis of "The Will to Believe" is analyzed. I defend James's reply to the evidentialist . James's mountain climber example is used as a paradigm case for showing that the evidentialist is mistaken. ;Several other objections to James's line of thought are then considered and answered. I examine an objection based on the relation between belief and the will, and an objection that the non-cognitive method authorizes us to hold many beliefs that it should not. These include conflicting beliefs, beliefs produced by wishful thinking, and beliefs which result in actions which conflict with one's moral obligations. ;The rationality of non-cognitively justified belief is defended by appeals to James's counterexamples to the evidentialist, an argument designed to show that the evidentialist is mistaken, a theory of rationality that implies the evidentialist rule is false, and applications of James's thesis to philosophical problems in areas other than philosophy of religion. James's thesis is applied to theory selection, the justification of induction, and the justification of epistemic principles