지금까지 국내외를 막론하고 교회와 국가의 관계에 관한 역사적 논의, 특히 독일관념론 시대의 논의와 연계하여 이들 양자를 키에르케고어가 과연 어떻게 바라보았는지를 다룬 연구는 미흡하다. 나아가 이 논의를 키에르케고어의 이론철학, 곧 지식과 믿음의 관계에 대한 논의와 연계하여 다룬 경우는 거의 없는 실정이다. 이 논문은 이와 같은 문제의식 아 래서 키에르케고어의 국가-교회론에 관한 주장을 그의 지식-믿음론과 연계하여 살펴보고, 이어서 이를 독일관념론, 특히 헤겔, 칸트, 셸링의 국가-교회론과 연계하여 살펴볼 것이 다. 이를 통해 그의 종교-정치론이 오늘날 현대사회에서 지니는 의의를 모색하고자 한다.

Resumen Kierkegaard, en su Diario, ha dado un juicio filosófico favorable sobre los actos con los que Lutero ha iniciado la Reforma, pues con estos ha afirmado la autoridad de competencia del individuo que es un prius respecto al Estado y a la Iglesia. Por otro lado, Kierkegaard ha señalado que estos actos han sido viciados por razones filosóficas que han llevado no sólo a la formación de la Iglesia de Estado, sino a la del Estado-Iglesia. Primeramente, se (...) trata de razones de carácter político-filosóficas: una concepción del Poder confusa, una desvalorización del individuo a favor de la comunidad y del Estado, una perspectiva equivocada de la felicidad-salvación del hombre. Además, Kierkegaard ha señalado razones estrictamente filosóficas que han llevado al Estado-Iglesia: una equivocada concepción del ser y una errónea visión de lo que es la razón y el conocimiento. Estas razones, positivas y negativas, señalan cuestiones aún no resueltas en nuestros tiempos.Kierkegaard in his Diary has ¿ven a favorable philosophical judgment on the facts with which Luther has initiated the Reforma, for with these has affirmed the compeUnce authoritj of the individual who is a prius with respect to the State and the Church. On the other hand, Kierkegaard has pointed out that these acts have been vitiated by philosop bical reasons that have led not onlj to the formation of the Church of State, but to that of the Church-State. Firstlj, these are politicalphilosophical reasons: a confused conception of power, a devaluation of the individual in favor of the community and the state, a mistaken perspective of man's happiness and salvation. In addition, Kierkegaard has pointed out strictlj philosoph-ical reasons that have led the Church State: a mistaken conception of being and an erroneous visión of what is reason and knowledge. These reasons, positive and negative, point to issues not jet resolved in our times. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, and William James- three diverse philosophers from three different eras- have followed a similar route of non-theoretical justification of belief. This position states that there is no theoretical knowledge, positive or negative, of divine existence. The defense of religious belief, therefore, must be related to pervasive features of practical human existence; in other words, it must be subjective. While giving amble attention to the differences among these three philosophers, C. Stephen Evans finds (...) and examines a common structure to all their arguments. This structure includes a theoretical skepticism about the existence of God, a repudiation of a neutral attitude on this question, and a deliberate shift of this question from theoretical reason to practical reason. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought by Habib C. MalikJ. KellenbergerHabib C. Malik. Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997. Pp. xxii + 437. Cloth, $59.95.At the end of the twentieth century no one who has any acquaintance with Western philosophical or religious thought would fail to recognize (...) class='Hi'>Kierkegaard’s name. This was not always so. Kierkegaard wrote in his native Danish in the first half of the nineteenth century, and for decades his thinking and his name were virtually unknown outside Scandanavia. Habib C. Malik’s book contains the richly detailed story of how Kierkegaard’s thought became known in Europe and in the English-speaking world. Malik breaks down the reception of Kierkegaardian ideas into several phases: “non-reception,” the beginnings of reception, “misreception,” suppression, and serious reception. In the first phase Kierkegaard was read in Denmark, but not understood. In [End Page 637] the second phase, during the 1840s and 1850s while Kierkegaard was still alive, his writings started to become known outside Denmark in Scandanavia (and even reached North America via Scandanavian-American immigrants). In the period of “misreception,” as Malik calls it, Kierkegaard’s ideas or catch-words are appropriated but not fully understood—as with Ibsen, Malik argues. After Kierkegaard’s journals and papers began to be published in the 1870’s, there developed a new kind of interest in Kierkegaard, the “biographical-psychological approach,” initiated by Georg Brandes, in which Kierkegaard’s ideas and themes were interpreted in terms of the crucial events in Kierkegaard’s life. This approach led to the substance of Kierkegaard’s thinking being suppressed by what became a morbid interest in Kierkegaard’s personal life, such as a preoccupation with Kierkegaard’s relationship to Regine Olsen and then reading “The Diary of a Seducer” or key parts of Fear and Trembling as an expression of this event. The period of suppression reaches into the 1880s and 1890s as scholars and translators, like Christoph Schrempf, use Kierkegaard for their own ends. Schrempf, a Lutheran minister who renounces his belief, looks to Kierkegaard for support for his new stance and translates Kierkegaard into German, omitting passages that do not foster his end. Finally there is the period of serious reception, or its beginning, especially in the German-speaking world. Malik ends the story of Kierkegaard’s reception with the period following the First World War, before the development of twentieth century Existentialism.In the book’s eight chapters a vast number of minor and major cultural figures are dealt with. Some, like Hans Christian Andersen and Hans Christian Ørsted (the rector of Kierkegaard’s university and the discoverer of electromagnetism, whose approach to religion was cosmological) Kierkegaard knew and interacted with. Most, like Ibsen, Brandes, Schrempf, and Hans Peter Barford (the first editor of Kierkegaard’s extensive papers) and Albert Bärthold (who learned Danish to translate Kierkegaard into German and during the 1870’s regularly produced translations and commentaries) enter the story after Kierkegarrd’s death. Malik recounts Kierkegaard’s Kirkekampen (church-struggle) with the Lutheran Danish state-Church, and he brings out how Kierkegaard’s writing in this period of his “Attack on Christendom” greatly influenced the way he was initially received. He discusses the reaction to Kierkegaard by the early Swedish writer and feminist Fredrika Bremer, and he discusses Kierkegaard’s later influence on such various thinkers and writers as Miguel de Unamuno, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (to name some of the more familiar).There are many nuggets of detail in the book. For instance, those who have read Walter Kaufmann’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist would know that in 1888 Brandes called Kierkegaard to Nietzsche’s attention, but too close to the onset of Nietzsche’s madness for him to read Kierkegaard. However we learn from Malik that Brandes in a letter had characterized Kierkegaard as “one of the profoundest psychologists that have ever existed” and that Nietzsche in his reply in February of 1888 actually expressed the intention to “take up the psychological problem of Kierkegaard” when... (shrink)

Perception is commonly regarded by philosophers as being the only basis of empirical knowledge. I challenge this assumption by investigating how we come to have beliefs about the emotional experiences of ourselves and others, and how we come to have beliefs about the emotional properties of inanimate objects, such as the belief that the church is somber. Before presenting my account of this type of belief formation, I argue that the observation that someone is in a (...) particular emotional state, or the observation that an inanimate object displays an emotional property, should not be subsumed under the rubric of perception. I argue that this subsumption oversimplifies the nature of such observations and leaves too many interesting and important philosophical questions unanswered. In addition to suggesting how these sorts of beliefs are formed, I argue that philosophers should endeavor to include them in their discussions of knowledge, and I examine how three contemporary accounts of knowledge can be expanded to accommodate such beliefs in the capacity of knowledge claims. (shrink)

Purрose of the рaрer is to emphasize affinity and succession in the aррroaches of Descartes and Kierkegaard to the interpretation of key factors of their philosophical search. It could be implemented through understanding such viewpoints of both thinkers as a) appropriate reasons for human existence; b) possible factors for human freedom as a condition of self-actualization; c) original approach to prove the existence of God. Theoretical basis. The use of phenomenology and hermeneutics enable us to comprehend the key philosopher’s (...) ideas as the manifestation of their personalities. Originality. The author believes that it is quite right to refer to the philosophy of the early modern period as a form of its demand fulfillment for human development. An essential prerequisite for revealing the toрic of the article is a focus on the latest investigations of Descartes’ philosophy, which demonstrate the anthropological significance. Since Kierkegaard’s viewpoint was developed through depersonalized understanding of philosophy, related motives of their thoughts are expressed by emphasizing their personal motives of philosophizing. This affinity is reflected firstly, in distancing from depersonalized and dehumanized world view; secondly, in religion-oriented search and proof of God’s existence based on human nature. Conclusions. Due to the modern state of historical and philosophical science, it is possible to argue that Descartes and Kierkegaard had content-related philosophizing motives, which are close to current search. Interpreting Descartes’ anthropological project by Kierkegaard, the author states the accepted determining influence of Hegel’s philosophy interpretation in general and his interpretation of Descartes, in particular. This argument allows to understand Kierkegaard’s search as Hegel’s deconstruction, because further uncritical retention and reproduction of his viewpoints are evaluated as a threat to fulfill human spiritual calling. A common and important thing in the views of both thinkers is their strong interest in individual and personal aspects of human nature as a constituent factor of God’s existence. (shrink)

This volume on anthropology and authority in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) offers its reader nineteen timely discussions of two fundamental categories pertaining to the literary, philosophical, and theological production of this prominent 19th century Danish thinker, whose vast influence upon 20th century intellectual life continues to grow as the new millennium approaches. The volume's nineteen contributors - from Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, Italy, and the United States - inquire into such complex problematics in Kierkegaard's (...) oeuvre as the interrelationship between the human, the divine, and the spiritual; between the secular and the Christian; between human and Christian love; between state and church institutions and the single individual of faith; and between this individual's concern for quality in civic and religious life and the quantitative forces of modern society's masses and crowds. Special attention is given to the indisputable authority of God, Christ, and the apostles as opposed to the debatable authority, or non-authority, of the author. Of particular interest is the nexus between Kierkegaard's existential and religious concerns, on the one hand, and his intricate textual conceptions, multifarious poetic strategies, and various means of pseudonymous and indirect communication, on the other. Between the covers of Anthropology and Authority some chapters seek to refine received knowledge of Kierkegaard in such disciplines as theology and moral philosophy. Conversely, other chapters submit rather postmodern critiques of the author's stylistic and rhetorical devices. A summary assessment of the nineteen contributions would fail to recognize this considerable methodological and theoretical diversity. Instead, the reader's access to the smorgasbord of insights has been facilitated by an introduction in which one of the American editors briefly outline the individual contributions on a general historical and intellectual background. Altogether, the probing insights of Anthropology and Authority go to the core of Søren Kierkegaard's authorship. Individual chapters either update previous responses to the many challenges presented by this work, or the chapters face new challenges and/or present critical challenges on their own. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public (...) domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In theoretical matters, ecclesiastical claims to knowledge have lead to various conflicts with science. Claims in orientational matters, sometimes connected to attempts to establish them as a rule for legislation, have often been in conflict with the justified claims of non-believers. In addition they violate the Principle of Autonomy of the individual, which is at the very heart of European identity so decisively shaped by the Enlightenment. The Principle of Autonomy implies that state legislation should not interfere in (...) the life of individual citizens, as long as his or her actions do not violate the rights of others. This paper—using the example of the theory of evolution—rejects ecclesiastical claims to theoretical knowledge as completely unfounded and preposterous. In the case of orientational knowledge—using the example of euthanasia—ecclesiastical claims to (universalizable) knowledge are shown to be unfounded as well. The Church’s position with respect to euthanasia and a range of other bio-ethical topics, such as pre-marital sex, contraception, abortion, indissolubility of marriage, and homosexuality, rests on a very peculiar ethical position. This ethical position is the natural right theory, which—far from being universalizable—is shared by very few people. Among other things, this position presupposes the belief in God as the creator of nature, and the assumption that ethical norms can be derived from this premise. Thus ecclesiastical knowledge claims, cannot be justified in a way which could be reasonably supposed to be universally acceptable. Kant (see the quote) was the first to require this sort of justification. Claims that fail to implement Kant’s stipulations should be eliminated by what I would like to call “Kant’s razor”. (shrink)

For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, (...) most of which consists of what are called his "journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term "diaries." By far the greater part of Kierkegaard's journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects--philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure--but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Volume 6 of this 11-volume series includes four of Kierkegaard's important "NB" journals, covering the months from early May 1849 to the beginning of 1850. At this time Denmark was coming to terms with the 1848 revolution that had replaced absolutism with popular sovereignty, while the war with the German states continued, and the country pondered exactly what replacing the old State Church with the Danish People's Church would mean. In these journals Kierkegaard reflects at length on political and, especially, on ecclesiastical developments. His brooding over the ongoing effects of his fight with the satirical journal Corsair continues, and he also examines and re-examines the broader personal and religious significance of his broken engagement with Regine Olsen. These journals also contain reflections by Kierkegaard on a number of his most important works, including the two works written under his "new" pseudonym Anti-Climacus and his various attempts at autobiographical explanations of his work. And, all the while, the drumbeat of his radical critique of "Christendom" continues and escalates. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced. (shrink)

For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, (...) most of which consists of what are called his "journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term "diaries." By far the greater part of Kierkegaard's journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects--philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure--but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Volume 5 of this 11-volume series includes five of Kierkegaard's important "NB" journals, covering the months from summer 1848 through early May 1849. This was a turbulent period both in the history of Denmark--which was experiencing the immediate aftermath of revolution and the fall of absolutism, a continuing war with the German states, and the replacement of the State Church with the Danish People's Church--and for Kierkegaard personally. The journals in the present volume include Kierkegaard's reactions to the political upheaval, a retrospective account of his audiences with King Christian VIII, deliberations about publishing an autobiographical explanation of his writings, and an increasingly harsh critique of the Danish Church. These journals also reflect Kierkegaard's deep concern over his collision with the satirical journal Corsair, an experience that helped radicalize his view of "essential Christianity" and caused him to ponder the meaning of martyrdom. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced. (shrink)

This chapter describes the Danish church, with the focus centered primarily on its life during the years 1835 to 1855 when Søren Kierkegaard was productive. The beginnings of the church up to 1835 are briskly examined, and then contributions of Jacob Peter Mynster, Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, and Hans Lassen Martensen are delineated. These three figures have been chosen because of their importance both for the Danish church and for Kierkegaard. The chapter ends with a (...) few comments on some creative thinkers who find in Kierkegaard's critique a resource for critically reforming the church so that it might more appropriately serve its intended purpose. At points in the chapter, the analysis utilizes the Kierkegaardian categories of the objective and the subjective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:UNDERSTANDING ST. THOMAS ON CHRIST'S IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD Guy MANSINI, O.S.B. Saint Meinrad Seminary St. Meinrad, Indiana HE International Theological Commission's 1985 statement on " The Consciousness of Christ Concerning Himel £ and His Mission " undertakes to state what by faith Christians hold about the knowledge of Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth knew : first, that he was the Son of God, and that he (...) possessed divine and not merely prophetical authority; second, that his mission was to preach the Kingdom and die for the salvation of all; third, that he was founding a Church. Fourth and last, since he was dying for all, he knew the " all" he was dying for in such a way as to enable each Christian to say truly " he died for me " (see Gal. 2 :20). Beyond this the bare statement that Jesus was conscious of his identity and mission, the Commission declines to go, and expressly avoids " theological elaborations calculated to give an account of this datum of faith." 1 The traditional account of this datum is, of course, the theory of Christ's immediate (or " beatific") knowledge of God, and usually as elaborated by St. Thomas. It is an approach to pre1 " The Consciousness of Christ Concerning Himself and His Mission," in International Theological Commission: Texts and Documents, 1969-1985, ed. Michael Sharkey (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 307. Again, the Commission " rules out any a priori philosophical terminology " (p. 307). Hence I take the liberty of using " knowledge " where the Commission speaks of " consciousness." The Commission characterizes the cognitional state of affairs it imputes to Christ merely as a "presence" of the knowing-conscious subject to itself in its " heart." I take it that the Commission means to avoid being specific with regard to any distinction between conceptual and non-conceptual modes of knowledge, and that this is the reason it prefers "consciousness" to " knowledge." 91 92 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. cisely this account of St. Thomas's that I would like to outline in the second part of this article. There are three things especially that seem to stand in the way of approaching St. Thomas's account today. First, there is some difficulty in seeing it precisely as that, an account of what the Commission calls the datum of faith. Second, a key distinction upon which St. Thomas's account depends, that between faith and knowledge, tends to be obliterated in contemporary analytic epistemology, where knowledge is described as "justified true belief." This makes it hard to see the difference St. Thomas supposes there is between the cognitive state of Christians, on the one hand, and that of Jesus, on the other. Third, some modern biblical theology discovers Jesus himself as the ·exemplar of Christian faith. Thus, even supposing we have kept the distinction between faith and knowledge, the required application of the distinction becomes impossible.2 I will be unable to deal at any length with these last two difficulties, but will advert to them briefly within the outline of an approach to St. Thomas's account that I mean to give here.3 I. St. Thomas's Position as an Account of the Datum of Faith The first difficulty, however, is to be addressed at the outset and at some length. It arises from the way in which St. Thomas presents his teaching on the knowledge of Christ in the Summa 2 Another cause of confusion as to what St. Thomas means by Christ's immediate knowledge of God might be said to be the popularity of Karl Rahner's " Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowledge and Self-Consciousness of Christ,'' Theological Investigations V (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966) ; 193-215, where Rahner conflates consciousness and knowledge in a context where they need to be distinguished. This has been nicely sorted out, however, in a study by Raymond Moloney, "The Mind of Christ in Transcendental Theology: Raimer, Lonergan and Crowe," H eythrop Journal 25 (1984) : 288-300. s There is also the difficulty for this question of modern exegesis, a difficulty mentioned by the International Theological Commission. But this is a difficulty for the original apprehension of the datum of faith itself rather than for understanding St. Thomas... (shrink)

The traditional conception of knowledge as justified true belief is refuted in two famous counterexamples by Edmund L. Gettier. Roderick M. Chisholm has attempted to rescue a version of the traditional conception by distinguishing between defective and nondefective kinds of justification, and redefining knowledge more specifically as nondefectively justified true belief. Chisholm's revised definition avoids Gettier's counterexamples, but goes too far in the opposite direction, imposing conditions that are too narrow and not jointly necessary for (...) class='Hi'>knowledge. Chisholm's definition excludes some claims that intuitively constitute genuine knowledge1 by entailing that if a true belief is invalidated as knowledge when defectively justified by a total body of evidence that also makes evident at least one false proposition, then no knowledge whatsoever can be supported by the same evidence. An alternative analysis of knowledge is proposed, according to which the potential loophole between the state of affairs that justifies belief in a proposition, and the state of affairs that makes the proposition true, permitted by the traditional concept of knowledge and discovered by Gettier's counterexamples, is closed by redefining knowledge as semantically‐epistemically evidentially relevant justified true belief. (shrink)

Luck permeates our lives, and this raises a number of pressing questions: What is luck? When we attribute luck to people, circumstances, or events, what are we attributing? Do we have any obligations to mitigate the harms done to people who are less fortunate? And to what extent is deserving praise or blame a ected by good or bad luck? Although acquiring a true belief by an uneducated guess involves a kind of luck that precludes knowledge, does all (...) luck undermine knowledge? And how accurate are our luck attributions anyway? The academic literature has seen growing, interdisciplinary interest in luck, and this volume brings together and explains the most important areas of this research. It consists of 39 newly commissioned chapters, written by an internationally acclaimed team of philosophers and psychologists, for a readership of students and researchers. Its coverage is divided into six sections: (i) The History of Luck, (ii) The Nature of Luck, (iii) Moral Luck, (iv) Epistemic Luck, (v) The Psychology of Luck, and (vi) Future Research. The chapters in these sections cover a wide range of topics, from the problem of moral luck, to anti-luck epistemology, to the relationship between luck attributions and cognitive biases, to meta-questions regarding the nature of luck itself, to a range of other theoretical and empirical questions currently being investigated by ethicists, epistemologists, and psychologists. By bringing this research together, the Handbook serves as both a touchstone for understanding the relevant issues and a first port of call for future philosophical and psychological research on luck. (shrink)

This book is addresses a topic that has received little or no attention in orthodox epistemology. Typical epistemological investigation focuses almost exclusively on knowledge, where knowing that something is the case importantly implies that what is believed is strictly true. This condition on knowledge is known as factivity and it is, to be sure, a bit of epistemological orthodoxy. So, if a belief is to qualify as knowledge according to the orthodox view it cannot be false. (...) There is also an increasingly influential group of epistemologists who argue that one ought to act only on what one knows, because truth of belief is the surest way to guarantee that our actions work out as planned. They defend what is known as the knowledge norm for action. This view is typically justified in virtue of the idea that successful intentional action should stem from knowledge because knowledge is a factive propositional attitude and it is, as a result, success-prone with respect to intentional action. In other words, true beliefs that constitute knowledge are the rationally normative standard for successful acting. But, there are clearly multitudes of cases where epistemic agents operate successfully and even rationally on the basis of beliefs that are false. That this is the case is not especially controversial. Sometimes false beliefs facilitate successful action. Of course, this can be because the agent is simply lucky. However, there is something particularly important about some false beliefs that relates to successful action but not in virtue of luck. While not strictly true, the beliefs in question are close to the truth or approximately true. This gives rise to the possibility that there are knowledge-like states that play roles very similar to knowledge but which are only quasi-factive. That is to say such states imply approximate truth and do not imply strict truth. Moreover, often such beliefs facilitate successful action in virtue of their being approximately true and this suggests a much more plausible norm for successful action that encompasses both cases of rational action guided by such quasi-factive states as well as cases of rational action guided by knowledge. The thesis of this book is that quasi-factive knowledge-like states are far more common that epistemologists have acknowledge and the book introduces a theory of such states and how they give rise to a much more reasonable account of the norms for action. This involves some tricky issues concerning approximate truth, the rationality of believing not strictly true claims, the justification of approximately true beliefs, the nature of false but approximately true evidence, the norms of belief, knowledge and quasi-knowledge, etc. (shrink)

How is it possible for unconscious states to function as reasons? Two challenges are considered—one concerning the apparent dependence of normativity on self-knowledge, the other concerning the apparent irrationality of the unconscious. Both challenges are addressed through a discussion of 'spatial reasoning', which helps to make sense of 'emotional reasoning' as well.

Most of us experience the world through competing perspectives. A job or a religion seems important and fulfilling when looked at in one way; but from a different angle they seem tedious or ridiculous. A friend is obtuse from one point of view, wise from another. Continuing to hold both views at once can be unsettling, highlighting conflicts between our own judgments and values, and undermining our ability to live purposefully and effectively. Yet, as Jennifer Church argues in this (...) book, inner conflict can be a good thing, and not just as a temporary road bump on the road to resolution. This book describes several desirable types of "double consciousness"--or being of two minds--and explains why and how they should be maintained. Church looks critically at some common ideas about identity, including a popular belief about narratives that suggests our lives should "make sense" as a story. She also examines how empathy can helpfully cause us to be of two minds, and how various forms of irony and laughter enable us to benefit from holding onto opposing views. Finally, Church shows the merit of acknowledging reality while sometimes being guided by fantasy. Why It's OK to Be of Two Minds is for anyone who's held two opposing views simultaneously, which is to say it's for everyone. Key Features: Argues against a longstanding philosophical idea: that it is important to resolve inner conflicts that result from competing systems of beliefs Examines the role of empathy and friendship in maintaining a valuable form of double consciousness Considers how irony and laughter allow us to dedicate ourselves to our particular projects while acknowledging their ultimate insignificance Shows how fantasies that conflict with our beliefs can make a positive contribution to the way we live our lives. (shrink)

The author discusses Hume's theories of causal inference and his belief in substance to demonstrate that his philosophy, usually characterized as total scepticism, is not merely negative.

Kierkegaard's pseudonym Johannes Climacus famously defines faith as a risky “venture” that requires “holding fast” to “objective uncertainty.” Yet puzzlingly, he emphasizes that faith requires resolute conviction and certainty. Moreover, Climacus claims that all beliefs about contingent propositions about the external world “exclude doubt” and “nullify uncertainty,” but also that uncertainty is “continually present” in these very same beliefs. This paper argues that these apparent contradictions can be resolved by interpreting Climacus as a belief‐credence dualist. That is, Climacus (...) holds that beliefs and credences (i.e., degrees of belief) are two irreducibly distinct types of mental states. Beliefs are resolutions that close inquiry, thereby excluding doubt and reflecting subjective certainty by disregarding the possibility of error. Credences, by contrast, reflect assessments of evidential probabilities, thereby encoding a recognition of “objective uncertainty” by acknowledging the possibility of error. In addition to solving a vexing interpretive puzzle and showing how Kierkegaard anticipates contemporary views about the nature of belief and credence, this paper demonstrates that Kierkegaard developed a sophisticated account of the nature of belief, doubt, and certainty that merits serious philosophical consideration. (shrink)

The theoretical originality of John Locke's position concerning his doctrine of tolerance leads him on the one hand to raise the right to exist for "particular Churches" and on the other hand to erect the process of conviction above the intrinsic content of any belief. In the philosopher's reasoning, the Church is never rendered superfluous because only the practice of worship can demonstrate the sincerity of any spiritual approach. On the other hand, he refutes the postulates of clerical (...) authority on the truth in matters of faith since God would not have prescribed any model. Yet the tension between faith and knowledge is diminished by the Lockian demonstration that consciences, although and because they are weak, must never be violated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:560 BOOK REVIEWS recent discussion of Christian political theology in On War and Morality is correct, 1) Augustine was more Eusebian than we have generally thought, and 2) Luther was possibly his best exegete. Regarding Forrester's remaining political option, his leapfrogging from Tertullian to the Anabaptists misses the political theology of Western monasticism, which produced not only the witnessing cloister but also a brand of church-state theory (...) (e.g. Gregory VII and Leo IX) quite unlike East· ern Eusebianism. In short, Forrester's spectrum obscures more than it clarifies; the range of qualitatively distinct Christian political theologies is simply wider than he suggests. And while one appreciates a clear discussion of liberation theology, new paths to understanding are not opened. Loyola University Chicago, Illinois MICHAEL J. SCHUCK The Grammar of the Heart: New Essays in Moral Philosophy and Theology. Edited by RICHARD H. BELL. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988. Pg. 259 +xxviii. $24.95. Grammar tells us what kind of a thing something is, and this set of essays addresses what Paul Holmer calls the " grammar of faith." This grammar has been traditionally seen, however, in two markedly different ways: as one essay puts the contrast, a grammar of ' rational belief ' as opposed to a "grammar appropriate to affairs of the heart" (Hust· wit, 97). It is the second of these, the character of the grammar of the 'heart,' which these essays as a whole explore, and the sub-title of the 1987 symposium in honor of Holmer from which they are drawn- " Thinking with Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein "-indicates the two main avenues of exploration. Through these, we are told in the introduction, the authors intend to shift the concern of philosophy of religion and theology from questions of " epistemic credentials " to a construe· tive re-valuation of our age-an age which, arguably at least, is still as much " an age without culture " as it was when Wittgenstein first made the complaint. The hook consists of two parts, and each part is introduced by an illustrative selection from Holmer's writings on faith and morality, then followed by a corresponding set of six original essays. The first set of essays, the editor tells us, are " more philosophical," analyzing "the grammar of our modern culture and of religious practices in general," BOOK REVIEWS 561 while the second six are devoted to analyses of specifically moral and Christian concepts. Although the separation of the two may initially seem an artificial one, precisely against the " spirit of both Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard" which the essays are said to exemplify, it does in fact often result in the kind of overlap and repetition which are quite fruitful-for example, as in the mutually illuminating correspondence between the constructive philosophical suggestions about metaphor in the first part (Whittaker) and the presentation of the specifically Kierkegaardian understanding of the metaphorical ' language of love ' in the second part (Walsh). The collection as a whole is indeed in the spirit of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard by virtue of its imaginative diversity of perspective. Although there is the predictable (and admittedly useful) exploration of the ' grammar of the heart ' in terms of the standardly Kierkegaardian categories of " risk, passion, paradox, and duty " (95), there are also proposals which are both unexpected and exciting. A glance at a few of these will reveal something of the particular character and value of this collection. The centerpiece of the first part is the explicit proposal in two of the essays of an understanding of the grammar of the 'heart ' in which the role and relevance of the private (personal, individualistic) is challenged and rethought in light of the public (social interaction and practice ). The ' heart ' at issue is found at the heart of community; the grammar of the ' heart ' is a grammar of the activities of a life in common, rather than of privatized inwardness or interiority. Glehe-Mcf>ller, for example, examines the relation between two views of religion in Wittgenstein's writings-a first-person (Kierkegaardian) type of religion and a sociological view of religion as a shared phenomenon-arguing that, in the end, despite an explicit adherence to the former throughout his writings, Wittgenstein's intellectual commitments... (shrink)

In this paper I discuss a variant of the knowledge argument which is based upon Frank Jackson's Mary thought experiment. Using this argument, Jackson tries to support the thesis that a purely physical – or, put generally: an objectively scientific – perspective upon the world excludes the important domain of `phenomenal' facts, which are only accessible introspectively. Martine Nida-Rümelinhas formulated the epistemological challenge behind the case of Mary especially clearly. I take her formulation of the problem as a starting-point (...) and present a solution which is based solely on the concepts of capability and of metalinguistic beliefs. References to epiphenomenal facts, phenomenal knowledge etc. will be avoided completely. I specify my proposal against the backdrop of Burge's critical reflections about metalinguistic reinterpretation of expressions of belief and the externalist thesis held by Burge, Putnam and others that meanings and mental states are dependent upon the environment. My solution is then compared with Lewis' and Nemirow's ability objection. Finally I argue that the much discussed ``knowing what it is like'' has in its ordinary meaning nothing much to do with `phenomenal knowledge' or knowledge of `epiphenomenal' facts. (shrink)

The separation of church and state is generally taken to be a requirement of constitutional democracies. However, there is little agreement on the precise meaning of the ideal of separation. Some liberal conceptions of democratic legitimacy interpret the ideal of separation such that religious beliefs and reasons should be excluded from political justification. This exclusivist view raises fears that a commitment to liberal democracy is suitable only for secular citizens and religious citizens who are practical atheists, but not (...) for genuinely religious citizens. Against this view, liberal critics argue that the democratic ideal of equal treatment requires the inclusion of religious reasons on equal footing with secular reasons in political deliberation. This inclusivist view, however, raises fears that a commitment to democracy is suitable only for members of religious majorities. For, according to this view, a majority of religious citizens could impose coercive policies on secular citizens or citizens of different faiths without any obligation to give them reasons that they can reasonably accept. Against both views, I defend a conception of political justification and democratic legitimacy that does not rely on the religious–secular distinction in order to show how the normative commitments of constitutional democracies can be reflectively endorsed by all democratic citizens, whether religious or secular. (shrink)

The article introduces two kinds of belief-phenomenal belief and nonphenomenal belief---about color experiences and examines under what conditions the distinction can be extended to belief about other kinds of mental states. A thesis of the paper is that the so-called Knowledge Argument should not be formulated---as usual---using the locution of ‘knowing what it’s like’ but instead using the concept of phenomenal belief and explains why ‘knowing what it's like’ does not serve the purposes of (...) those who wish to defend the Knowledge Argument. The article distinguishes two rival accounts of the phenomenal/nonphenomenal distinction and explains how the result of the Knowledge Argument depends upon which of these accounts one wishes to accept. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Hegel's Account of Faith Kierkegaard's Criticism: The Separation of Faith and Knowledge Critical Evaluation Abbreviations of Hegel's Primary Texts Abbreviations of Works by Kierkegaard.

The commercial provision of putative stem cell-based medical interventions in the absence of conclusive evidence of safety and efficacy has formed the basis of an unregulated industry for more than a decade. Many clinics offering such supposed stem cell treatments include statements about the ‘ethical’ nature of somatic stem cells, in specific contrast to human embryonic stem cells, which have been the subject of intensive political, legal, and religious controversy since their first derivation in 1998. Christian groups—both Roman Catholic and (...) evangelical Protestant—in many countries have explicitly promoted the medical potential and current-day successes in the clinical application of somatic stem cells, lending indirect support to the activities of businesses marketing stem cells ahead of evidence. In this article, I make a preliminary examination of how the structures and belief systems of certain churches in South Korea and the United States, both of which are home to significant stem cell marketing industries, has complemented other factors, including national biomedical funding initiatives, international economic rivalries, permissive legal structures, which have lent impetus to a problematic and often exploitative sector of biomedical commerce. (shrink)

I argue that S knows that p implies that S is properly committed to the truth of p, not that S believes that p. Belief is not required for knowledge because it is possible that one could know that there are no beliefs. Being ‘properly committed’ to the truth of a proposition is a matter of having a certain normative status, not occupying a particular psychological state. After arguing that knowledge requires commitment instead of belief, (...) I go on to demonstrate the theoretical utility of this hypothesis. (shrink)

Orthodoxy has it that knowledge is a composite of belief and non-mental factors. However, Timothy Williamson suggests that orthodoxy implies that the concept of belief is acquired before the concept of knowledge, whereas developmental data suggest the reverse. More recently, Jennifer Nagel reviews the psychological evidence, building a psychological case that the concept of knowledge emerges prior to belief. I assess the psychological state of the art and find support for the opposite conclusion. (...) Overall the empirical evidence supports the orthodox view that the concept of belief is prior to the concept of knowledge. (shrink)

In this book, controversial and world-renowned theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, tackles the issue of theology being sidelined as a necessary discipline in the modern university. It is an attempt to reclaim the knowledge of God as just that – knowledge. Questions why theology is no longer considered a necessary subject in the modern university, and explores the role it should play in the development of our “knowledge” Considers how theology is often excluded from the knowledges of the modern (...) university because these are constituted by an understanding of time necessary to make economic and state realities seem inevitable Argues that it is precisely this difference that makes Christian theology an essential resource for the university to achieve its task - that is, to form people who are able to imagine a different world through critical and disciplined reflection Challenges the domesticated character of much recent theology by suggesting how prayer and the love of the poor are essential practices that should shape the theological task Converses with figures as diverse as Luigi Giussani, David Burrell, Stanley Fish, Wendell Berry, Jeff Stout, Rowan Williams and Sheldon Wolin Published in the new and prestigious Illuminations series. (shrink)

It is a piece of philosophical common sense that belief and knowledge are states. Some epistemologists reject this claim in hope of answering certain difficult questions about the normative evaluation of belief. I shall argue, however, that this move offends not only against philosophical commonsense but also against ordinary common sense, at least as far as this is manifested in the semantic content of the words we use to talk about belief and knowledge. I think (...) it is relatively easily to show with some linguistic tests that ordinary belief and knowledge attributions should be classified aspectually as state descriptions. Hence, the move some epistemologists to deny that belief and knowledge are states threatens to simply change the topic rather than open up answers to difficult questions in epistemology. I do not know fully how to answer the relevant questions about the normative evaluation of belief, but I pursue this critical point here in service of a positive proposal about the general framework in which they should be answered. In brief, the general framework is one which recognizes an important place for what I call state-norms, beside the action-norms which are more familiar from normative theory. And it locates the epistemic norms that apply to beliefs and are relevant for knowledge on the state-norm side of this divide. This turns out to be not only consistent with but indeed to underwrites the philosophical and ordinary common sense that belief and knowledge are states. (shrink)

In the philosophical literature on mental states, the paradigmatic examples of mental states are beliefs, desires, intentions, and phenomenal states such as being in pain. The corresponding list in the psychological literature on mental state attribution includes one further member: the state of knowledge. This article examines the reasons why developmental, comparative and social psychologists have classified knowledge as a mental state, while most recent philosophers--with the notable exception of Timothy Williamson-- have not. The disagreement (...) is traced back to a difference in how each side understands the relationship between the concepts of knowledge and belief, concepts which are understood in both disciplines to be closely linked. Psychologists and philosophers other than Williamson have generally have disagreed about which of the pair is prior and which is derivative. The rival claims of priority are examined both in the light of philosophical arguments by Williamson and others, and in the light of empirical work on mental state attribution. (shrink)

The paper assumes the usefulness of juxtaposing the major philosophical, religious, and literary components of the milieu of Newman's notion of knowledge. Rooted in classical philosophies of mind, his view draws both upon the idealisms of Kant and others and upon the variety of romanticisms of Coleridge and of the Oxford Movement. His Apologia Pro Vita Sua holds in uneasy reconciliation his insistence at once upon the necessity of rational grounds for belief and upon the psyche's need for (...) transcendence of rational processes. The resulting empiricism, most clearly stated in his Grammar of Assent, exhibits some of the theoretical problems common to that modern school of philosophy. (shrink)

Knowledge before belief ascription? Yes and no (depending on the type of “knowledge” under consideration). In an influential paper, Jonathan Phillips and colleagues have recently presented a fascinating and provocative big picture that challenges foundational assumptions of traditional Theory of Mind research (Phillips et al., 2020). Conceptually, this big picture is built around the main claim that ascription of knowledge is primary relative to ascription of belief. The primary form of Theory of Mind (ToM) thus (...) is so-called factive ToM that centres around knowledge-related mental states that are true rather than meta-representational ToM that centres around subjective epistemic states like belief that may or may not be true (Nagel, 2017; Phillips & Norby, 2019). Empirically, Phillips and colleagues build on converging findings from different areas: Ample research in developmental psychology shows that children track who has had informational access to events (and thus knows about the events) before they keep track of others’ potentially false beliefs (e.g., Perner & Roessler, 2012). Many studies from comparative psychology have found evidence that non-human great apes keep track of others’ perceptual and informational access while there is no convincing evidence that they keep track of others’ beliefs (Horschler et al., 2020; Martin & Santos, 2016; Call & Tomasello, 2008). And, work from cognitive psychology and experimental philosophy suggests that adults are faster, for example, to judge what others know than to judge what they believe (Phillips et al., 2018).In this commentary, we would like to critically evaluate and friendly amend the claims put forward by Phillips and colleagues. Conceptually, while we agree that some form of factive Theory of Mind is primary, we would like to raise doubts whether this primary factive ToM already involves full-fledged knowledge ascription. Empirically, we will point to potential test cases that are suitable to test Phillips and colleagues’ account against the friendly amendment proposed here. Is knowledge ascription really primary relative to belief ascription?We agree that the empirical findings reviewed by Phillips and colleagues do make a strong case for the conjecture that some form of factive ToM is indeed (phylogenetically, ontogenetically, and cognitively) primary. But we suspect that this claim, in unqualified form, may be somewhat incomplete and misleading. There is not necessarily one unitary form of factive ToM, and one notion of “knowledge“ in play across development and evolution, and perhaps not even in adults‘ Theory of Mind. This suspicion builds on several foundations: First, from an empirical point of view there have been, as highlighted by the authors, characteristic U-shaped developmental curves in some tasks of factive ToM – often a reliable indicator that different underlying processes are in play (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). Second, from a theoretical point of view, conceptual change and dual process approaches to ToM and other forms of social cognition have highlighted the possibility of more complex developmental trajectories such that earlier and more basic forms of a conceptual competence may be supplemented and superseded by later and more sophisticated refinements (e.g. Apperly & Butterfill, 2009; Perner, 1991). For the case of factive ToM, it may be that there is a basic and primitive notion of “knowledge“ in place early in ontogeny (and perhaps phylogenetically more ancient) that shares some of the essential features of our mature “knowledge” concept: “knowledge” in this broad sense, as emphasized by the authors, is factive, not modality-specific, and allows for representations of egocentric ignorance. For this basic concept, the slogan “knowledge before belief“ may well be true. However, this basic concept need not yet be our mature notion of knowledge proper and thus this basic form of factive ToM may fall crucially short of our adult form of factive ToM. Why? Because essential elements of our mature concept of knowledge are still missing: First of all, while so-called Gettier cases and other considerations make clear that knowledge does not reduce to justified true belief (one can have justified true beliefs that still do not amount to knowledge; Gettier, 1963), according to many accounts knowledge at least presupposes justified true belief. Correspondingly, ascription of knowledge would thus presuppose ascription of belief. Now, we understand that this is one of the very traditional assumptions that Phillips and colleagues challenge, and given space restrictions we will not focus on it here any further (see, e.g, Rose & Schaffer, 2013). But there is a second crucial aspect of knowledge proper that is missing from the basic notion: knowledge proper is aspectual, and consequently reports of knowledge proper are intensional, while neither seems to be the case of basic knowledge and reports of it. Knowledge proper is aspectual in the following sense: whether or not someone knows something depends on how, under which aspects, she has had informational access to a given scene. Suppose Eve has seen Clark Kent enter the house. Does she know that Superman is in the house? It depends. If she knows about the identity Clark Kent = Superman, she does, otherwise she does not. Consequently, knowledge ascription is intensional in the sense that the substitution of co-referential terms is not necessarily truth-value preserving: “Eve knows that Clark Kent is in the house“ does not imply “Eve knows that Superman is in the house”.Now, from the point of view of cognitive development, much research suggests that children’s appreciation of the aspectuality of propositional attitudes (and the intensionality of propositional attitude reports) develops in protracted ways not before the age of four (e.g., Apperly & Robinson, 1998; Rakoczy et al., 2015; Proft et al., 2019). In fact, recent studies suggest that around age four children undergo a fundamental and coherent cognitive revolution: they acquire a solid meta-representational notion of propositional attitudes that allows them to ascribe subjective aspectual representations that may or may not be accurate: Children come to solve false belief tasks that require belief ascription at the same time as tasks that require an understanding of aspectuality, and there is strong convergence/correlation between these different tasks (Rakoczy, 2017; Rakoczy et al., 2015). These considerations thus evoke a somewhat modified picture of the developmental course of factive Theory of Mind: Some form of factive ToM, indeed, comes first (developmentally and phylogenetically). In this primary stage, subjects track agents‘ cognitive relations to the world that display some of the essential signatures of knowledge proper (factive; not modality-specific; allow for representations of egocentric ignorance). Various approaches in ToM research over the last years have aimed at describing this basic form of knowledge-like relations, for example in terms of “cognitive connections“ (Flavell, 1988), “registration“ (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009), “experiential records“ (Perner & Roessler, 2012) or “awareness relations“ (Martin & Santos, 2016). While differing in focus and details, all these accounts converge in stressing one crucial point: this early form of factive ToM allows observer to keep track of what others have or have not witnessed and, in this sense, what they do or do not know. It allows, in other words, so-called “Level I” perspective-taking (Flavell, 1977): understanding what others see. But this early form of factive ToM still falls short of knowledge ascription proper because it lacks an appreciation of the essential aspectuality of propositional attitudes in general and of knowledge in particular. In other words, it does not yet allow for “Level II” perspective-taking: understanding how different agents may represent a given scene (Fizke et al., 2017; Low & Watts, 2013; Oktay-Gür et al., 2018). Only later, around age 4, do children then develop the new meta-representational framework of propositional attitudes that goes beyond basic factive ToM. Once they have this framework and thus an understanding of aspectuality at hand, they can extend their initial and primary factive ToM to acquire the mature concept of knowledge (as at least presupposing true, justified belief, where belief is necessarily aspectual). So, while basic knowledge ascription indeed precedes belief ascription, full-blown attribution of aspectual knowledge develops in tandem with belief attribution. Or in other words: basic factive ToM precedes full-blown meta-representational ToM but full-blown factive ToM does not (since it is itself a part of full-blown meta-representational ToM). Empirical outlookThis slightly modified picture raises many interesting new empirical questions, and makes competing predictions relative to the picture put forward by Phillips and colleagues: From developmental and comparative perspectives, the modified picture would predict that “knowledge before belief” only applies for a circumscribed set of knowledge-related situations: those in which knowledge ascription does not require sensitivity to the aspectuality of knowledge (does not require distinguishing, for example, “Does she know that Clark Kent is in the house?” vs. “Does she know that Superman is in the house?”) and is limited to Level I perspective-taking. Young children before the age of four and non-human primates should be able to solve such non-aspectual knowledge ascription problems. But only older children from around age four, once they have acquired the full-fledged conceptual apparatus of meta-representation, should be able to handle aspectual knowledge ascription. Regarding adult functioning, the most fundamental question is: Do adults operate with one unitary factive ToM, as Phillips and colleagues assume? Or are there two kinds of factive ToM throughout the lifespan, as our modified picture suggests? In particular, does the more basic version remain in operation in adulthood, perhaps even as the default mode, that reveals itself under conditions of speeded responses, limited cognitive resources etc.? If the latter were true, specific performance patterns should be found. First, results such that adults are faster at knowledge ascription than at belief ascription (as found in Phillips et al., 2018) should be restricted to designs where knowledge ascription does not require any considerations of aspectuality. In such designs (as they were used in Phillips et al., 2018), subjects can make use of their primordial (non-aspectual) factive ToM in knowledge ascription, but have to use their full-fledged (aspectual) ToM in belief ascription. However, in new cases in which knowledge ascription is potentially aspectual (“Does Eve know that Superman is in the house?”), the speed difference between knowledge and belief ascription should vanish since both now require full-fledged (aspectual) ToM. Second, and relatedly, fast factive ToM should have characteristic signature limits to do with the lacking appreciation of aspectuality (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009; Low et al., 2016): Subjects under speeded conditions (or in dual task formats in which their central cognitive resources are taxed) should be unable to systematically distinguish between “Eve knows that Clark Kent is the house” (true) and “Eve knows that Superman is in the house” (possibly true). No such signature limits should be expected, in contrast, under reflective conditions in which subjects can use their full-fledged and mature factive ToM. Interestingly, these hypothetical developmental and adult performance patterns would correspond to similar patterns found in the domain of modal judgments. Adults, it seems, have two notions of modality at their disposal: a more primitive (ontogenetically old) default notion that does not differentiate between descriptive and normative modals and thus yield characteristic signature limits; and more differentiated and nuanced notions (ontogenetically more recent) that do sharply distinguish between different forms of modality. What works fast and gets addressed in speeded tasks is the primitive default notion (in speeded tasks, adults tend to confuse what is possible with what is permitted, for example, in the way very young children do) whereas the more nuanced notions reveal themselves in reflective task settings in which adults are not subject to such confusions (Phillips & Cushman, 2017). Modality judgments and factive ToM may thus reveal striking analogies. Just like in the area of modality, then, there may be basic and default factive ToM, present from early on and in operation throughout the lifespan in speeded responses (and under other conditions of limited cognitive resources), and more sophisticated factive Theory of Mind that develops later on the basis of full-fledged meta-representation and that reveals itself in more reflective judgements. (shrink)

According to the knowledge norm of belief, one should believe p only if one knows p. However, it can easily seem that the ordinary notion of belief is much weaker than the knowledge norm would have it. It is possible to rationally believe things one knows to be unknown The aim of belief, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013). One response to this observation is to develop a technical notion of ‘outright’ belief. A challenge for (...) this line of response is to find a way of getting a grip on the targeted notion of belief. In order to meet this challenge, I characterize ‘outright’ belief in this paper as the strongest belief state implied by knowledge. I show that outright belief so construed allows this notion to play important theoretical roles in connection with knowledge, assertion and action. (shrink)

Industrial emissions of greenhouse gases are significant contributors to climate change, which poses a grave threat to social and economic systems. Our understanding of what might drive firms to reduce their emissions of these gases, however, is incomplete, and it is not clear that the knowledge gained from other environmental issues will readily apply to these emissions. We argue and find that indicators of environmental injustice previously shown to relate to toxic pollutants, for example, are poor predictors of greenhouse (...) gas emissions. Instead, we show that the degree of belief in and concern about climate change in a local community is a significant predictor of the facility’s rate of emission improvements. Furthermore, we find that beliefs at both the facility and headquarter communities influence emission reduction, and that those effects are substitutes for each other. (shrink)

Self-knowledge is the cognitive ability of the agent to know his or her own mental states. There are several types of mental states, and there is a method for the knowledge of each type. The focus of this dissertation is on the knowledge of one‘s own beliefs. With this goal in mind, we present the empiricist and the rationalist approaches to the knowledge of one‘s own beliefs. Empiricist theories of self-knowledge proposes introspection as the method (...) for the knowledge of one‘s own beliefs. However, there are issues related to the phenomenology of belief – what it is like to believe that p? The best rationalist theories of self-knowledge proposes that an agent ―look outwards to constitute her own mind and her own belief. Our final question is about the relationship between knowledge of one‘s beliefs and rationality. Burge (2013) requires that, in order to be rational, one must have self-knowledge. We argue that the kind of rationality specified by Burge is too demanding. As agents in the realm of common life, we have incomplete understanding of our own doxastic mental states, but that is not a problem for the knowledge of our own beliefs as dispositions, since they does not come from rational deliberation; nevertheless, we are responsible and our beliefs as commitments. Both kinds of belief can be known by the transparency method. We conclude claiming that the transparency method is enough for the self-knowledge of doxastic mental state and ensuring the rationality of the agent. (shrink)

The most important and common solution to the Pyrrhonian skeptic’s regress problem is foundationalism. Reason-giving must stop somewhere, argues the foundationalist, and the fact that it does stop does not threaten knowledge or justification. The foundationalist has a problem, though; while foundationalism might adequately answer skepticism, it does not allow for a satisfying reply to the skeptic. The feature that makes a belief foundationally justified is not the sort of thing that can be given to another as a (...) reason. Thus, if foundationalism is true, we can only fall silent in the face of a challenge to our epistemically basic beliefs. Call this the practical or existential problem of foundationalism. Thomas Reid offers a rather stunning solution to this problem. Humor, he thinks, can be used to defend basic beliefs which cannot be defended by argument. We develop and defend an account on which Reid is correct and emotions such as rueful amusement can be invoked to rationally persuade the skeptic to accept foundationally justified beliefs. Then, inspired by Kierkegaard, we extend the account to foundational moral and religious beliefs. (shrink)

According to Sosa’s virtue epistemological account, an instance of (animal) knowledge is a belief that instantiates the property of being apt. The purpose of this contribution is, first, to show why this claim is, without further clarification, problematic. Briefly, an instance of knowledge cannot be identified to an apt belief because beliefs are states and aptness is a property that only actions —and no states— can exemplify. Second, I present the metaphysical amendment that the tenants of (...) virtue epistemology can adopt in order to avoid this objection. This conducts me to suggest a new, metaphysically sounder version of the virtue epistemological account of knowledge in which knowledge is extrinsically apt belief. (shrink)

Kant developed a distinctive method of philosophical argumentation, the method of transcendental argumentation, which continues to have contemporary philosophical promise. Yet there is considerable disagreement among Kant's interpreters concerning the aim of transcendental arguments. On ambitious interpretations, transcendental arguments aim to establish certain necessary features of the world from the conditions of our thinking about or experiencing the world; they are world-directed. On modest interpretations, transcendental arguments aim to show that certain beliefs have a special status that renders them invulnerable (...) to skeptical doubts; they are belief-directed. This paper brings Kierkegaard's thesis of the “subjectivity of truth” to bear on these questions concerning the aim of transcendental arguments. I focus on Kant's argument for the postulate of God's existence in his Critique of Practical Reason and show that Kierkegaard's thesis of the subjectivity of truth can help us construe the argument as both belief and world directed. Yet I also argue that Kierkegaard's thesis of the subjectivity of truth can help us understand the source of our dissatisfaction with Kant's transcendental arguments: It can help us understand that dissatisfaction as an expression of what Stanley Cavell calls the “cover of skepticism,” the conversion of metaphysical finitude into intellectual lack. (shrink)

Wright (1998) and Bar-On (2004) put pressure on the idea that self-knowledge as an explanandum should be identified with privileged belief formation. They argue that setting up the discourse on the level of belief and belief formation rules out promising approaches to explain self-knowledge. Hence, they propose that we should characterize self-knowledge on the level of linguistic practice instead. I argue against them that self-knowledge cannot be fully characterized by features of our linguistic (...) practice. I propose that in some circumstances – disagreements about one's mental states – self-knowledge plays a role, but this role cannot be described in virtue of features of our linguistic practice. I consider three objections to the argument and conclude that we should not conceive self-knowledge solely in terms of linguistic practice. (shrink)

Background: Midwives are required to make ethical decisions with the support of respective codes of professional ethics which provide a framework for decision making in clinical practice. While each midwife should be ethically aware and sensitive to the ever-changing issues within reproduction, few empirical studies have examined the views of student midwives in relation to reproductive ethical dilemmas. Objective: The aim of this study was to explore midwifery students’ reactions to a number of ethical dilemmas relating to women’s experiences of (...) reproductive decision making. Design: A series of focus groups were conducted with midwifery students who were asked to discuss five culturally significant scenarios including issues of knowledge acquisition regarding methods of family planning, removal or insertion of an intrauterine device, and abortion. Setting: A University in Turkey was the setting for this study. Participants: Purposeful sampling was adopted which resulted in five focus groups with a total of 57 midwifery students. Ethical considerations: The study was reviewed and granted formal ethical approval by an ethical committee at the Faculty of Health Science in Atatürk University. The head of the Faculty of Health Science approved the investigation. The participants received both oral and written information about the study and they gave their consent. Results: Five themes were identified from the analysis of the focus group data related to all five scenarios. These themes were ‘the right to information’, ‘choice and protection’, ‘parental rights and welfare of the women’, ‘make a decision’ and ‘women rights and sexual abuse’. Conclusion: This study has shown that while students respected women’s choice, they also expressed great ambivalence in some situations when personal values conflict with dominant societal beliefs and professional ethics. A focus on ethics education to include human rights is suggested as a means to enable students to explore their own social-value judgements, and as a means to limit the possible development of ethical confusion and moral distress. (shrink)

This collection of essays by eminent philosopher Fred Dretske brings together work on the theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind spanning thirty years. The two areas combine to lay the groundwork for a naturalistic philosophy of mind. The fifteen essays focus on perception, knowledge, and consciousness. Together, they show the interconnectedness of Dretske's work in epistemology and his more contemporary ideas on philosophy of mind, shedding light on the links which can be made between the two. The (...) first section of the book argues the point that knowledge consists of beliefs with the right objective connection to facts; two essays discuss this conception of knowledge's implications for naturalism. The next section articulates a view of perception, attempting to distinguish conceptual states from phenomenal states. A naturalized philosophy of mind, and thus a naturalized epistemology, is articulated in the third section. This collection will be a valuable resource for a wide range of philosophers and their students, and will also be of interest to cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers of biology. (shrink)

This volume presents vernacular knowledge as a realm of discourses and beliefs that challenge institutional authorities and official truths. It draws attention to various genres as expressions of alternative knowledge in relation to authority, including traditional and personal experience narratives, life stories, ditties, and jokes. These are transmitted through a wide range of vehicles of expression including online, face to face, social media, forums, networks, and conferences, which are shared and shaped communally but individually articulated and actualised. Vernacular (...) knowledge and vernacular authority also underpin a variety of material culture, rituals and other practices. The volume covers various realms of the supernatural, such as ghosts, saints, spirits, magic, energy lines, and divinations. However, it also discusses beliefs that do not involve the supernatural such as conspiracy theories, politically and ideologically determined creeds, stereotypes and other cases where beliefs appear as socially compelling ideas and challenge prevailing received wisdom. Vernacular religion is examined not only in relation to institutional religion but also to secularism, state sponsored atheism, scientific rationalism and official medicine. Vernacular Knowledge proceeds from the premise that in contrast to institutionally established discourses with monological voicing, the expressive field of vernacular is always heteroglot; it eludes regulation and supervision. (shrink)

A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament. Building on his (...) unique position as a philosopher and politician, Vattimo takes on some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is it still possible, long after Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, to talk of moral imperatives, individual rights, or political freedom? Are these values still relevant in today's world? Tackling these crucial issues, Gianni Vattimo argues that nihilism is not the absence of meaning but a recognition of a plurality of meanings; it is not the end of civilization but the beginning of new social paradigms. Commonly associated with the pessimistic belief that all of existence is meaningless, nihilism, as a philosophical principle, is far less sensational--it is the ethical doctrine that there are no moral absolutes or infallible natural laws, that "truth" is inescapably subjective. Because the conditions for equality and liberty are not "naturally" given, society must actively create these ideals or it will inevitably fall prey to irrationality, prejudice, and oppression. Vattimo contends that the infighting, timidity, and confusion that have overtaken contemporary liberal thought and politics are the products a prolonged and indulgent mourning over the loss of the transcendental father figure--any institution or power structure that defines truth, knowledge, and reality. Until humanity overcomes its need for external authority--whether it be organized religion, the nation-state, or free-market capitalism--emancipation will remain unattainable. Collecting fourteen of Vattimo's most influential essays on ethics, politics, and law, _Nihilism and Emancipation_ is a provocative reevaluation of meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. (shrink)

I show that from common views about propositions as sets of possible worlds and knowledge requiring a sufficiently strong safety condition one can derive a condition stating that self-knowledge of belief is only possible if the content of that belief is fully understood. I show this by a reductio. If a subject S lacks full understanding of a proposition p, then S’s belief about believing that p cannot amount to knowledge. Even though my argument (...) is based on particular views about propositions and knowledge, I argue that the same kind of argument is also available for other knowledge conditions that rule out relevant luck and other accounts of propositions. However, for many of these other accounts of knowledge the requirement for understanding p will not be full understanding, but only sufficiently high understanding. These results tell us how self-knowledge, ruling out luck and understanding belief contents relate. (shrink)

Doxastic normativism is the thesis that norms are constitutive of or essential to belief, such that no mental state not subject to those norms counts as a belief. A common normativist view is that belief is essentially governed by a norm of truth. According to Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi, truth norms for belief cannot be formulated without unpalatable consequences: they are either false or they impose unsatisfiable requirements on believers. I propose that we construe (...) the fundamental norm of belief as a knowledge norm, rather than a truth norm. I argue that a specific kind of knowledge norm—one that has a subject's obligation to believe that p depend on her being in a position to know that p—might avoid the well-known formulation problems with truth norms. (shrink)

Despite Radford’s (1966) case of the unconfident examinee, many epistemologists think that knowledge entails belief. Epistemologists have levelled two sorts of criticisms: first, they point out that Radford’s case isn’t a clear case of knowledge; second, they object that even if knowledge is granted in Radford-like cases, agents therein will still have dispositional belief. This paper offers a case that improves upon Radford’s. In my case, the agent’s evidence is intuitively sufficient for knowledge. And (...) we do not need to posit dispositional belief to make the case empirically plausible. My counterexample involves a distinctive type of agent: cautious believers. Cautious believers care more about avoiding false belief. When armed with evidence that is sufficient - though only barely sufficient - to justify some proposition p, cautious believers suspend judgment about p. Nevertheless, they remain minimally behaviourally sensitive to the evidence. Ultimately, I argue that such agents are in a mental state that falls short of belief. (shrink)

Kierkegaard’s influence on Wittgenstein’s conception of religious belief was profound, but this hasn’t so far been given the attention it deserves . Although Wittgenstein wrote comparatively little on the subject, while the whole of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre has a religious theme, both philosophers have become notorious for refusing to construe religious belief in either of the two traditional ways: as a ‘propositional attitude’ on the one hand or as a mere ‘emotional response’ with no reference to the (...) ‘real world’ on the other. This refusal to play by the orthodox dichotomies, as it were, has led to gross misrepresentation of their thought by numerous commentators. Neither Wittgenstein nor Kierkegaard has been immune to allegations of both ‘relativism’ and ‘fideism’, although neither charge could be wider of the mark. It is not that Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard reject the role that reason has to play in both religion and philosophy, but that they try to undermine from within certain common assumptions about the nature of both religious faith and the point of philosophical activity that make us believe that the traditional dichotomies exhaust all the available options. What I hope to show in this paper is that more sense can be made of Wittgenstein’s controversial remarks on religion, if we juxtapose them with Kierkegaard’s religious thought, especially that of Kierkegaard’s pseudonym , Johannes Climacus, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. The focal point of this paper is going to be the attempt to read what little Wittgenstein has to say about this topic through the lens of Climacus’ claim that ‘objectively there is no truth; an objective knowledge about the truth or the truths of Christianity is precisely untruth.’ I will begin by giving a brief exposition of Climacus’ views, will then sketch out what Wittgenstein has to say on the matter and will then attempt to bring the two together. In the remainder of the paper I will assess the implications of Wittgenstein’s and Kierkegaard’s conception as well as address some of the problems that their account might be said to engender. (shrink)