I seek to promote a fuller understanding of religious skepticism by defending five theses. These concern, respectively: its breadth, discussed in relation to theism on the one hand and naturalism on the other; why it should be distinguished from a general metaphysical skepticism; how it is supported by the consequences of recent cultural evolution, which at the same time enable new and stronger arguments for atheism; the relations it bears to non-doxastic religious faith; and, finally, its (...) curious capacity in certain not uncommon circumstances to take the form of a soft irreligion that is widely approvable—even from a religious perspective. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that given the present state of relevant inquiry, the facts of religious diversity justify religious skepticism. Because of the diversity of religious claims, the denial of any detailed religious proposition is equivalent to a large disjunction of alternative claims. The same is true of the denial of metaphysical naturalism. And having typically acquired no detailed understanding of the whole panoply of religious views, religious believers and metaphysical naturalists are (...) rarely in a position to judge, of any such disjunction, how likely it is to be true. Now the investigative deficit here might conceivably be oversome, but the paper concludes by showing that even where it is overcome, we remain in conditions supporting religious skepticism because of the evolutionary immaturity of our species, which prevents us from being in a position to judge whether religious diversity as humans in the future – or some future species – will know it includes ideas about the Divine trumping any contrary ideas of today. (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg has provided a rigorous and robust philosophical defense of religious skepticism through various modes of reasoning and employs an epistemic defeat strategy that appeals to unrecognized evidence. He contends on this framework that reason requires religious skepticism. This essay focuses on Schellenberg’s basic epistemic defeat strategy. I argue that his methodology is problematic because his key skeptical argument rests on an equivocation on the notion of total evidence, which makes it difficult to implement (...) his epistemic defeat strategy in favor of his claim that reason requires us to be religious skeptics. (shrink)

Schellenberg’s Wisdom to Doubt uses a “meta-evidential condition constraining assent” that I dub MECCA. On MECCA, my total current evidence E may be good evidence for H, yet not justify my believing H, due to meta-evidential considerations giving me reason to doubt whether E is “representative” of the total evidence E* that exists. I argue that considerations of representativeness are implicit in judging that E is good evidence, rendering this description incoherent, and that Schellenberg’s specific meta-evidence has less trumping power (...) than he thinks. (shrink)

The Wisdom to Doubt is a major contribution to the contemporary literature on the epistemology of religious belief.

Many epistemologists argue that responses to disagreement should exhibit a certain kind of epistemic impartiality. “Strong conciliationists” claim that we ought to give equal weight to the views of those who, judged from a dispute-neutral perspective, appear to be our “epistemic peers” with respect to some disputed matter. Using a Bayesian framework, Chapter 8 considers whether there is a plausible epistemic impartiality principle that would require us to give up confident religious (or irreligious) belief in favor of religious (...) skepticism. It is argued that the strong conciliationist’s epistemic impartiality is untenable, at least in contexts like the religious domain where the primary questions under dispute cannot be cleanly separated from questions about what qualifications are needed to reliably assess those primary questions. The chapter recommends instead a rationalist view on which rational insight can sustain justified confidence even when impartial grounds are lacking. It closes by defending the “religious acceptability” of this rationalist epistemology. (shrink)

Skepticism, Relativism, and Religious Knowledge shows where responses to skepticism and relativism by Karl Barth and Reformed epistemology have led to impasses, and reconstructs their insights in a more robust response that does not depend on making excessive claims about our epistemic capacities. This response is based on a more nuanced conception of the relationship between trust, doubt, faith, and reason, and a Kierkegaardian perspective on religious knowledge that stresses the role of the will and the (...) intellectual and theological virtues. (shrink)

The Equal Weight View is a view about the epistemic significance of disagreement that is thought to have significant skeptical consequences. In this paper I do two things: (i) apply the Equal Weight View to cases of religious disagreement, and (ii) evaluate some consequences of that application for the rationality of religious beliefs. With regard to (i), I argue that the Equal Weight View implies that awareness of the current state of disagreement over religious propositions, such as (...) God exists or God doesn’t exist, gives us a defeater for any non-skeptical attitude toward such propositions. With regard to (ii), I examine what this entails about the rationality of religious beliefs. In particular, I examine how troubling the theist should find these consequences, and argue that they are not as troubling as is typically thought. -/- . (shrink)

Philosophical skepticism, according to numerous influential accounts of it, is bound up with our failure or inability to adopt an “absolute” standpoint. Similarly, many religions speak of an “absolute” that also is beyond human reach. With this similarity in mind, I will develop what I take to be a religious dimension of skepticism. First, I will discuss the connection that Stanley Cavell draws between his reading of skepticism and the notions of God and original sin. I (...) will then refer to William James’s description of the religious experience of conversion and apply it to the transformative aspect of skepticism. Finally, I will argue with respect to mysticism and negative theology that the transformative experiences one can find in both skepticism and religion can be interpreted as yielding an experiential understanding of the finitude of the human condition. (shrink)

Many people with religious beliefs, pro or con, are aware that those beliefs are denied by a great number of others who are as reasonable, intelligent, fair-minded, and relatively unbiased as they are. Such a realization often leads people to wonder, “How do I know I’m right and they’re wrong? How do I know that the basis for my belief is right and theirs is misleading?” In spite of that realization, most people stick with their admittedly controversial religious (...) belief. This entry examines the epistemology of such belief retention, addressing issues of disagreement, agnosticism, skepticism, and the rationality of reflective religious belief. (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)

This book is the first systematic account of Pierre Charron's influence among the major French philosophers in the period (1601-1662). It shows that Charron's Wisdom was one of the main sources of inspiration of Pierre Gassendi's first published book, the Exercitationes adversus aristoteleos. It sheds new light on La Mothe Le Vayer, who is usually viewed as a major free thinker. By showing that he was a follower of Charron, La Mothe emerges neither as a skeptical apologist nor as a (...) disguised libertine, as combatting superstition but not as irreligious. The book shows the close presence of Charron in the preambles of Descartes' philosophy and that the cogito is mainly based on the moral Academic self-assurance of Charron's wise man. This interpretation reverses the standard view of Descartes' relation to skepticism. Once this skepticism is recognized to be Charron's Academic one, it is seen not as the target but as the source of the cogito. Pascal is the last major philosopher for whom Charron's wisdom is crucially relevant. Montaigne and Descartes influenced, respectively, Pascal's view of the Pyrrhonian skeptic and of the skeptical main arguments. The book shows that Charron's Academic skeptical wise man is one of the main targets of his projected apology for Christianity, since he considered him as a threat and counter-example of the kind of Christian view of human beings he believed. By restoring the historical philosophical relevance of Charron in early modern philosophy and arguing for the relevance of Academic skepticism in the period, this book opens a new research program to early modern scholars and will be valuable for those interested in the history of philosophy, French literature and religion. (shrink)

In the history of philosophical thought, few themes loom as large as skepticism. Skepticism has been the most visible and important part of debates about knowledge. Skepticism at its most basic questions our cognitive achievements, challenges our ability to obtain reliable knowledge; casting doubt on our attempts to seek and understand the truth about everything from ethics, to other minds, religious belief, and even the underlying structure of matter and reality. Since Descartes, the defense of knowledge (...) against skepticism has been one of the primary tasks not just of epistemology but philosophy itself. The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism features twenty-six newly commissioned chapters by top figures in the field. Part One contains articles explaining important kinds of skeptical reasoning. Part Two focuses on responses to skeptical arguments. Part Three concentrates on important contemporary issues revolving around skepticism. As the first volume of its kind, the articles make significant contributions to the debate on skepticism. (shrink)

During a period of great religious upheaval Anglican philosopher and ecclesiastic Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-1871) became famous for his 1858 Bampton Lectures, which sought to defend traditional faith by employing a skeptical philosophy. Understanding Mansel and the passionate debate that surrounded his career provides insight into the current struggle for ancient religions to articulate their traditions in a modern world. In Scripture, Skepticism, and the Character of God Dane Neufeld explores the life and thought of the now forgotten (...) nineteenth-century theologian. Examining the ideological differences between this philosopher and his contemporaries, Neufeld makes a case for the coherence of Mansel's position and traces the vestiges of his thought through the generations that followed him. Mansel found himself at the centre of an explosive debate in the church, concerning the Christian scriptures and the moral character of the God they described. Though the rise of science is often credited with provoking a crisis of doubt in the nineteenth century, shifting ideas about humanity and God were just as central to the spiritual unrest of the era. Mansel's central argument, that the entire Bible must be read as a unified witness to the reality of God, provoked disagreement among theologians, churchmen, and free thinkers alike who were uncomfortable with certain aspects of the scriptural portrayal of God's activity and character. Mansel's attempt to reconcile theological skepticism with scripturalism was misunderstood. He was branded a hopeless fideist by the free thinkers and a dangerous skeptic by high, broad, and evangelical churchmen alike. Many of the controversies in contemporary Christianity concern the collision between modern morality and biblical renderings of God. Neufeld argues that Henry Mansel, while a deeply polarizing figure, brought clarity and precision to this debate by exposing what was at stake for Christian belief and biblical interpretation in the Victorian period. (shrink)

Many have maintained that the nature and extent of religious disagreement ought to shake our confidence in our religious or explicitly irreligious beliefs, leading us to be religious skeptics. This chapter argues that the most plausible ‘conciliatory’ view of disagreement does not lend support to religious skepticism. ‘Strong’ conciliatory views that say that one’s response to a disagreement should always be entirely determined by dispute-independent reasons are implausible. The only plausible conciliationism is a moderate version (...) that holds that one’s partisan reasoning about a disagreement is undermined only when one has sufficiently strong dispute-independent reasons for trusting the views of one’s disputants. But systems of religious belief often have certain features that make it unlikely that this moderate conciliationism will require a significant degree of conciliation when it is applied to religious disputes. (shrink)

Our focus will be some prominent ways in which scholars have tried to motivate skepticism about the rationality of religious belief and in the process make a case for atheism. This will lead us in turn to consider how the putative flaws in these skeptical arguments might mitigate against the philosophical case for atheism. Finally, we will consider how fideistic and quasi‐fideistic approaches to the epistemology of religious belief might be able to embody a certain kind of (...) skepticism while nonetheless avoiding atheism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 40-61 [Access article in PDF] Montaigne, Skepticism and Immortality Zahi Zallou I IN THE LAST PAGES OF HIS ESSAY "Of Experience," Michel de Montaigne warns against the desire to "go outside ourselves." 1 While Montaigne apparently spares Christian mystics from his biting critique ("those venerable souls, exalted by ardent piety and religion to constant and conscientious meditation on divine things" [p. 856]), there (...) is no suggested criterion enabling one to discriminate between these "venerable souls" and those individuals dangerously engaging in similar practices, claiming to have similar mystical religious experiences. The latters' "care of the self" (cura sui) is a kind of caring that would paradoxically do violence to their human self (conceived by Montaigne as both mind and body): "That is madness: instead of changing into angels [in order to be closer to the divinitas of God], they change into beasts [a regression to the realm of animalitas]; instead of raising themselves, they lower themselves" (p. 856). With this conduplicatio, the repetition of the verb "to change," Montaigne emphasizes the role of agency, thus pointing out that they are to a large measure responsible for their condition, through their practices of self-care, or rather what Nietzsche has called their spiritual "incuria sui." 2 Neither the mind nor the body should be excluded from serious consideration, Montaigne stresses: "For it is indeed reasonable, as they say, that the body should not follow its appetites to the disadvantage of the mind; but why is it not also reasonable that the mind should not pursue its appetites to the disadvantage of the body?" (p. 681). Divorcing the mind from the body is, indeed, seen as an unwise, and potentially disastrous, practice: [End Page 40] Those who want to split up our two principal parts and sequester them from each other are wrong. (p. 484) To what purpose do we dismember by force a structure made up of such close and brotherly correspondence? On the contrary, let us bind it together again by mutual services. Let the mind arouse and quicken the heaviness of the body, and the body check and make fast the lightness of the mind. (p. 855) Montaigne's suspicion of claims pertaining to the transcendent realm is perhaps most forcefully expressed in his late additions to "Of Experience": "Between ourselves, these are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct. [...] These transcendental humors frighten me, like lofty and inaccessible places" (p. 856). Not even Socrates, who is known to have engaged in excessive spiritual meditations, is spared from the essayist's critical reflections: "And nothing is so hard for me to stomach in the life of Socrates as his ecstasies and possessions by his daemon, nothing is so human in Plato as the qualities for which they say he is called divine" (p. 856). This should be seen as a qualification of his earlier discussion of Socrates's daimonion in "Of Prognostications": "The daemon of Socrates was perhaps a certain impulse of the will that came to him without awaiting the advice of his reason [discours]. In a well-purified soul such as his, prepared by a continual exercise of wisdom and virtue, it is likely that these inclinations, although instinctive and undigested, were always important and worth following" (pp. 29-30). What is at issue here is the contrast (yet without any tension) between reason's way and God's way, so to speak, between Socrates's "discours" (his reason, which dictates to him the appropriate and rational means of action) and his "demon" (Socrates's divine voice or "divine sign," 3 which informs him of what to do and, especially, not to do). 4 Due to Socrates's wise and virtuous character, the essayist speculates, the former never erred in acting on his impulses or undigested inclinations. Montaigne generalizes and is even tempted to translate some of his own past actions in terms of a Socratic-like divine inspiration: "Everyone feels within himself some likeness of such stirrings [...] And I have had some [...] by which I let myself... (shrink)

As a way of participating in the discussion on the disciplinary nature of philosophy of education, this article attempts to find another distinctive way of relating philosophy to education for the studies in philosophy of education. Recasting philosophical skepticism, which has been dismissed by Dewey and Rorty in their critiques of modern epistemology, it explores whether Cavell's romantic interpretation of it can allow us to conceive of skepticism as an exemplary practice of education, especially internal to the learner. (...) This opens up the possibility of viewing the disciplinary nature of philosophy of education as congenial to other humanities like literature or religious studies, rather than to social sciences as usually considered. (shrink)

Diverse interpretations of Maimonides’ Guide have abounded since it was first written. A recent school depicts Maimonides as a critical philosopher, in the Kantian mold, who was skeptical of claims to know certain metaphysical truths. Josef Stern’s new book is a landmark in this skeptical interpretation, which refines and extends the debate in various new directions. This chapter claims that focusing on skeptical motifs can bring Maimonides into line with recent developments in understanding the history of philosophy. Stern directs attention (...) to the role that questioning can play in religious faith, and contends that Maimonides’ arguments are a series of spiritual exercises leading to equipollence and, ultimately, to silence and incomplete knowledge of God and the intelligences. The second half of the chapter turns to arguments that oppose a straightforward reading. It contextualizes them in studies of recent decades and offers alternative explanations of key passages in order to preserve a traditional reading. (shrink)

This paper examines "moderate modal skepticism", a form of skepticism about metaphysical modality defended by Peter van Inwagen in order to blunt the force of certain modal arguments in the philosophy of religion. Van Inwagen’s argument for moderate modal skepticism assumes Yablo's (1993) influential world-based epistemology of possibility. We raise two problems for this epistemology of possibility, which undermine van Inwagen's argument. We then consider how one might motivate moderate modal skepticism by relying on a different (...) epistemology of possibility, which does not face these problems: Williamson’s (2007: ch. 5) counterfactual-based epistemology. Two ways of motivating moderate modal skepticism within that framework are found unpromising. Nevertheless, we also find a way of vindicating an epistemological thesis that, while weaker than moderate modal skepticism, is strong enough to support the methodological moral van Inwagen wishes to draw. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics by Catalina González QuinteroZuzana ParusnikováCatalina González Quintero. Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics. Cham: Springer, 2022. Pp. 268. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-3-030-89749-9. £99.99.This book is a valuable contribution to the rapidly expanding field of research into the formative impact of ancient skepticism on early modern philosophy. This new paradigm was (...) introduced several decades ago, as González Quintero acknowledges, by the pioneering work of Richard Popkin; and while Popkin emphasized the constitutive role of Pyrrhonism in this process, recent philosophical debates have been characterized by a more measured approach, carefully differentiating between the Academics and the Pyrrhonists, and their respective influence on modern skeptics. Gonzáles Quintero opts for the Academic interpretation of Hume’s skepticism, applying it to both his Treatise and the first Enquiry, and extending it to both of Kant’s Critiques—an area much less explored in the context of ancient skepticism. She thus heads into a complex philosophical landscape.The reader may be somewhat puzzled by the book’s subtitle, one which seems to add yet another theme to its already broad structure. However, as Gonzáles Quintero explains in the Introduction, she wants to take the discussions of Academic skepticism beyond the field of empirical science and concentrate on the attitude of the skeptics towards metaphysics; her aim is to show how Cicero, Hume, and Kant “used skeptical means to examine the justification of metaphysical claims and to determine, in this way, which resulting beliefs could be held non-dogmatically and for practical purposes” (1). Perhaps then, the book may be more accurately titled Academic Skepticism and Metaphysics: Cicero, Hume and Kant.Though this may seem a reduction in the scope of the topics, in this particular case it is an expansion, since the author reconstructs how the attitude of the skeptics to metaphysics unfolds from their general epistemological skepticism concerning the limits of reason. She divides the book into three main parts (Cicero, Hume, and Kant), with the first chapter of each part describing the skeptical method of that particular philosopher or school, and the second examining its application to metaphysical matters. This is a huge undertaking for one book, requiring the author to navigate a vast field of philosophical material, including a significant amount of primary and secondary literature, while turning it all back toward the main question concerning the role played by Academic (Carneadean) skepticism in the ancient, Humean, and Kantian treatments of religion and other metaphysical issues. The danger of topic-overload arises and a selective approach is crucial to avoid “dropping the ball.” Gonzáles Quintero tackles this task with varying success. [End Page 346]The first chapter of the first part of the book provides a thorough analysis of Academic skepticism and how it differs from Pyrrhonism and stoicism. With an extensive knowledge of scholarly debates on ancient skepticism, the author discusses various nuances in the relationship between radical Pyrrhonism and Arciselaus of the Second Academy, moving on, predictably, to Carneades of the Third Academy, who proposed a moderate version of skepticism based on evaluating the degree of persuasiveness of impressions. Such impressions deserve non-dogmatic approval and can thus reduce the scope of epoché; they motivate our search for truth while admitting our fallibility; and they guide us in practical matters. Her argument that assenting to persuasive beliefs contains a rational (normative) aspect perhaps deserves further discussion; for the ancient skeptics the criterion of persuasiveness was subjective and unstable, reflecting our momentary feelings about appearances.In the chapter on metaphysics, the author compares Cicero’s skeptical method in De Natura Deorum (DND) and the Tusculan Disputations. In the former, Cicero (through the character of Cotta) abandons skeptical principles (which would prevent us from defining the nature of the gods) for the sake of the practical usefulness of religious rituals as endorsed by the Stoics; while for the Epicureans (Velleius) the gods (or some cosmic Deity) are utterly unconcerned by our world, for the Stoics (Balbus) they care about human affairs—thus this latter stance supports the state religion that Cicero... (shrink)