Religious Belief, Occurrent Thought, and Reasonable Disagreement
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Eva Schmidt
Abstract
This comment raises two worries for Crane’s view of religious beliefs and their contents. First, I argue that his appeal to inferentialism about the contents of dispositional beliefs cannot fully avoid the problem of inconsistent beliefs. For the same problem can be raised for occurrent thought, and the inferentialist solution is not available there. Second, I argue that religious beliefs differ from ordinary beliefs with respect to their justification in cases of peer disagreements. This suggests that noncognitivism about religious beliefs, which Crane opposes, is the correct view after all.
Zusammenfassung
Dieser Kommentar erhebt zwei Einwände an Cranes Darstellung von religiösen Überzeugungen und deren Inhalten. Erstens argumentiere ich, dass sein Verweis auf den Inferentialismus bezüglich des Inhalts dispositionaler Überzeugungen das Problem inkonsistenter Überzeugungen nicht vollständig vermeiden kann. Denn dasselbe Problem stellt sich für gegenwärtige Überzeugungen, und die inferentialistische Lösung ist hier nicht verfügbar. Zweitens argumentiere ich, dass sich religiöse Überzeugungen von gewöhnlichen Überzeugungen hinsichtlich ihrer Rechtfertigung in Fällen von Meinungsverschiedenheiten zwischen epistemisch Ebenbürtigen unterscheiden. Dies legt nahe, dass der von Crane abgelehnte Nonkognitivismus bezüglich religiöser Überzeugungen die korrekte Position ist.
Acknowledgements
I thank Tim Crane, as well as audiences at the Munich Lecture in the Philosophy of Religion and at the spring 2023 meeting of the DFG Network on the Future of Philosophy of Religion for helpful discussion. Work on this commentary was supported by the DFG within the project “Epistemic Dilemmas, Normative Conflicts, and Epistemic Normativity”, project number 516156675.
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Munich Lecture in the Philosophy of Religion
- Is Religious Belief a Kind of Belief?
- What’s Belief Got to Do With It?
- Religious Belief, Occurrent Thought, and Reasonable Disagreement
- Why Belief? Varieties of Religious Commitment
- Replies to Gäb, Schmidt and Scott
- Other Research Articles
- Why we do not need demonstrative proof for God’s existence to know that God exists
- An Appraisal of Christoph Schwöbel’s Trinitarian Theology of Creation in Dialogue with Natural Sciences
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Munich Lecture in the Philosophy of Religion
- Is Religious Belief a Kind of Belief?
- What’s Belief Got to Do With It?
- Religious Belief, Occurrent Thought, and Reasonable Disagreement
- Why Belief? Varieties of Religious Commitment
- Replies to Gäb, Schmidt and Scott
- Other Research Articles
- Why we do not need demonstrative proof for God’s existence to know that God exists
- An Appraisal of Christoph Schwöbel’s Trinitarian Theology of Creation in Dialogue with Natural Sciences
