Debating Christian Religious Epistemology

An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God

John M. DePoe, Tyler Dalton McNabb, John M. DePoe, Tyler Dalton McNabb

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350062733
• eBook ISBN: 9781350062764
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

What does it mean to believe in God? What passes as evidence for belief in God? What issues arise when considering the rationality of belief in God? Debating Christian Religious Epistemology introduces core questions in the philosophy of religion by bringing five competing viewpoints on the knowledge of God into critical dialogue with one another. Each chapter introduces an epistemic viewpoint, providing an overview of its main arguments and explaining why it justifies belief. The validity of that viewpoint is then explored and tested in a critical response from an expert in an opposing tradition. Featuring a wide range of different philosophical positions, traditions and methods, this introduction: - Covers classical evidentialism, phenomenal conservatism, proper functionalism, covenantal epistemology and traditions-based perspectivalism
- Draws on MacIntyre's account of rationality and ideas from the Analytic and Conservatism traditions
- Addresses issues in social epistemology
- Considers the role of religious experience and religious texts Packed with lively debates, this is an ideal starting point for anyone interested in understanding the major positions in contemporary religious epistemology and how religious concepts and practices relate to belief and knowledge.

1
Classical Evidentialism

John M. DePoe

Is it ever reasonable to hold religious beliefs without evidence? The purpose of this essay is to spell out a reasonable way to answer this question negatively. Because my position maintains that evidence is required for holding reasonable or justified beliefs, it is called “evidentialism.” There are, of course, some very implausible accounts of religious epistemology that have been labeled “evidentialism” (that no reflective person has ever held), which are set up as straw men and refuted without any consideration for more reasonable versions of this position. For example, one popular philosophy of religion textbook actually describes evidentialists as endorsing that most people hold their religious beliefs in an irrational way, while affirming that only an elite few are capable of having justified beliefs about religion.¹ Needless to say, the evidentialist position is highly unpopular among philosophers today. (I sometimes wonder if evidentialism’s disfavor in contemporary philosophy is due primarily to poor public relations.) Fortunately, truth is not determined by counting noses, and I intend to make a compelling case for evidentialism in what follows.

Since there are many variations on, not to mention misconceptions of, the evidentialist position, I will begin by defining my account of evidentialism. After this brief description, I will present the main reasons for accepting evidentialism. Then, some applications of this epistemology to topics in philosophy of religion will be explored. Finally, the essay will close by considering an objection to my position.

Defining Classical Evidentialism

Evidentialism, boiled down to its basics, is the position that affirms that beliefs require sufficient evidence in order to be justified. The “classical” descriptor to this view denotes that my version of evidentialism is wedded to a version of classical foundationalism. My exposition of the definition of Classical Evidentialism will revolve around unpacking these two notions.

So, what does it mean to hold that beliefs require sufficient evidence in order to be justified? Let’s start with the concept of evidence.² Evidence consists of a person’s awareness of good reasons or grounds that imply that the propositional content of the belief is true (or likely to be true).³ It is important to notice that this technical definition of evidence is different from some colloquial and loose ways of talking about evidence. Sometimes people talk about evidence as though it is nothing more than a physical object. Unfortunately, this loose way of talking about evidence conceals a number of significant features of evidence. For instance, a prosecutor might argue in a courtroom that the defendant’s fingerprints on the murder weapon are evidence of the defendant’s guilt. But the physical object alone does not point to the defendant’s guilt. After all, one needs to be aware that fingerprints are unique to each person, and that the probability of the defendant’s innocence dramatically diminishes in light of his fingerprints’ presence on the murder weapon. Additionally, the physical object alone can’t justify the guilt of the defendant without somebody being aware of it. For these reasons, evidence requires that a subject is aware of it and that it indicates the truth of the proposition for which it is evidence.⁴ In sum, this account of evidence entails that for a belief to be justified, a person must be aware of good reasons or grounds that support the truth of the belief.

Classical foundationalism is the second component of Classical Evidentialism.⁵ Foundationalism is the position that a properly ordered noetic structure, or system of beliefs, consists of beliefs inferentially supporting other beliefs in a single direction (i.e., no circular justification), which ultimately are based on beliefs that are noninferentially justified. Or, to describe it starting from the “bottom,” classical foundationalism’s noetic structure “begins” with noninferentially justified beliefs that provide inferential support for other beliefs “above” them, which in turn may inferentially support other beliefs “higher” up.⁶ Noninferentially justified beliefs are commonly called “basic beliefs,” and when these beliefs are justified they are called “properly basic beliefs.” Although it is unfashionable in the current philosophical climate,⁷ historically classical foundationalism has been the favored approach to epistemology for thinkers as diverse as St. Augustine of Hippo, John Locke, Bertrand Russell, C. I. Lewis, and Roderick Chisholm.⁸

Since noninferentially justified beliefs provide the foundation for the whole system of beliefs to possess justification and knowledge, it is important that these basic beliefs are nonarbitrarily tethered to truth. For this reason, classical foundationalists depart from other varieties of foundationalism by maintaining that basic beliefs must be incorrigible. To say that a belief is incorrigible means that the subject stands in an uncorrectable position with respect to the truth of that belief. For instance, if someone is having an excruciating headache, nobody (not even a neuroscientist who has run a series of diagnostic tests on this person) is in a better epistemic position to correct this person and inform him that he is not experiencing a headache. Perhaps the simplest and most readily available form of incorrigible belief takes place when the subject is pointing to the qualities of his own experience in believing, “I am being appeared to thusly.”⁹ Incorrigible beliefs are impervious to falsehood, which guarantees a connection to truth at the most basic level of belief in classical foundationalism.

How should we think about justification on Classical Evidentialism? The key to understanding the classical foundationalist account of justification is to see how this account of justification maintains the subject’s awareness of his evidence and how the connection to truth is guaranteed throughout inferential links in a properly arranged noetic structure. Both of these elements are secured through direct acquaintance. Direct acquaintance, according to Bertrand Russell, occurs when a person stands in a “direct cognitive relation to the object, i.e. when [the subject is] directly aware of the object itself.”¹⁰ Elsewhere, he writes, “we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge of truths.”¹¹ Thus, I am directly acquainted with the auditory sensations of footsteps echoing from the hallway, whereas I am indirectly acquainted with the person’s presence in the hallway (by way of inference from the sounds of his footsteps).

While direct acquaintance itself is not a kind of knowledge or justified belief, it can serve as the basis for knowledge or justified belief. Loosely following Richard Fumerton’s analysis,¹² I take epistemic justification for any belief, p, to consist of a person having three direct acquaintances: (i) direct acquaintance with his grounds for believing that p is the case, (ii) direct acquaintance with the thought that p is the case, and (iii) direct acquaintance with the truth-bearing relationship that holds between a person’s grounds for believing that p is the case and the person’s thought that p is the case. The truth-bearing relationship in the third acquaintance can refer to a number of different relations such as correspondence or entailment among the strongest connections to truth, and making probable or being the best explanation to denote a belief’s probabilistic connection to truth. Importantly, the person who has these three direct acquaintances is holding a belief that is a nonarbitrarily connected to truth, and he is aware of why his belief is true.

In sum, Classical Evidentialism is an account of religious epistemology that adopts evidentialism and classical foundationalism. Evidentialism affirms that beliefs are justified when they are adequately supported by evidence and evidence consists of a subject’s awareness of good reasons that support a belief’s truth. Foundationalism maintains that some beliefs are basic (justified noninferentially), and classical foundationalism holds that properly basic beliefs must be incorrigible. Direct acquaintance provides the means by which subjects can be aware of the nonarbitrary connection to truth that is necessary for a belief to be justified.

The Case for Classical Evidentialism

Having defined Classical Evidentialism, the next task is to provide reasons to believe it is the correct account of religious epistemology. Any plausible account of epistemic justification must satisfy two important desiderata, an objective requirement and a subjective requirement. My primary argument for Classical Evidentialism is that it best satisfies both of these conditions.

Objectively, epistemic justification requires a connection to truth.¹³ This means that justification necessarily indicates that a belief enjoys some intrinsic and nonarbitrary link to truth. Believing that the butler’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon (in conjunction with a set of background beliefs), for example, indicates the truth that the butler committed the murder because the butler’s fingerprints are unlikely to be on the murder weapon if he is innocent and they are very likely to be on the weapon if he is guilty. Alternatively, thinking that the butler committed a crime on nothing more than the evidence one gleans in a response from a “magic eight ball” (a gag toy that reveals random answers to yes/no questions) is exceptionally dubious because the random answers of the magic eight ball are in no way connected to the truth of the matter. Clearly, one feature that distinguishes justified beliefs from unjustified beliefs is that they possess an objective connection to truth.

The subjective requirement for epistemic justification is that it must provide assurance of the belief’s truth to those who possess it. Epistemology is performed from the first-person perspective, and any realistic approach to epistemology will describe epistemic justification from that perspective. Epistemologists who have traditionally attempted to provide an analysis of epistemic justification in terms that are manifest from the first-person perspective are called internalists, and those who believe that justification includes factors beyond the purview of first-person awareness are called externalists. I find externalist accounts of justification unsatisfying and practically useless because they describe epistemology from a perspective that in practice no one possesses. “Solving” epistemic questions outside of the first-person perspective presents “solutions” from a perspective alien to the actual practices of epistemology.¹⁴ At best, they offer conditional or hypothetical “solutions” without any guidance as to how an individual can have assurance that he meets those conditions. Thus, the strongest objective connection to truth is worthless without providing the believer any subjective assurance or awareness of the belief’s connection to truth.

Laurence BonJour has illustrated the importance of the subjective condition for epistemic justification with his well-known example of Norman, the clairvoyant:

Norman, under certain conditions which usually obtain, is a completely reliable clairvoyant with respect to certain kinds of subject matter. He possesses n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Dedication Page
• Also Available from Bloomsbury
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction to Religious Epistemology
• 1 Classical Evidentialism
• 2 Phenomenal Conservatism
• 3 Proper Functionalism
• 4 Covenantal Epistemology
• 5 Tradition-Based Perspectivalism
• Works Cited
• Contributors
• Index
• Copyright Page