Belief, credence, and faith

Synthese, 2020

I explore how rational belief and rational credence relate to evidence. I begin by looking at three cases where rational belief and credence seem to respond differently to evidence: cases of naked statistical evidence, lotteries, and hedged assertions. I consider an explanation for these cases, namely, that one ought not form beliefs on the basis of statistical evidence alone, and raise worries for this view. Then, I suggest another view that explains how belief and credence relate to evidence. My view focuses on the possibilities that the evidence makes salient. I argue that this makes better sense of the difference between rational credence and rational belief than other accounts.

This article attempts to present a typology for evaluating religious truth claims in light of epistemological and metaphysical categories. Beginning with a distinction between "strong" and "weak" epistemological and metaphysical categories, it argues that a strong metaphysical set of beliefs need not be rooted in strong epistemological claims in order to be valid. Rather, it is possible to ground a "strong" set of metaphysical assertions within a "weak" epistemological framework, which, within its own framework, may be viewed to be presumptively true. Such a position, the article concludes, has the potential to provide a valid grounding for religious beliefs while allowing room for discourse across belief systems in a pluralistic society.

One of the deepest ideological divides in contemporary epistemology concerns the relative importance of belief versus credence. Traditional epistemology, which maintains the theoretical prominence of belief, faces a serious problem if—as some Bayesian epistemologists contend—rational decision making cannot be explained without making reference to rational credence, particularly in cases with abnormal payoff structures. The principal project of this paper is to present a novel way of defusing this problem. We suggest that, in these cases, rational decision-making might draw not on credences, but, rather, other doxastic attitudes—genuine representations that differ in strength from belief. Moreover, whether to hold these different doxastic representations can often be determined on the basis of one’s beliefs. So, in practice, belief without credence might well be enough to account for rational decision-making across a wide range of cases.

Philosophy Compass, 2020

Sometimes epistemologists theorize about belief, a tripartite attitude on which one can believe, withhold belief, or disbelieve a proposition. In other cases, epistemologists theorize about credence, a fine-grained attitude that represents one's subjective probability or confidence level toward a proposition. How do these two attitudes relate to each other? This article explores the relationship between belief and credence in two categories: descriptive and normative. It then explains the broader significance of the belief-credence connection and concludes with general lessons from the debate thus far.

Ars Disputandi

Faith ranges employment from trivial, everyday practice, all the way to diverse religious application. However, if epistemologist Peter Boghossian is right, that faith is “pretending to know things we don‟t know,” then clearly faith is a mundane, silly, failed venture of human peculiarity. Contrary to Boghossian's dismissal however, I will argue 1) Faith is epistemic in nature, 2) Faith is active, 3) Faith is trust, 4) Faith can be virtuous, and finally, 5) Faith is an adjunct avenue in acquiring knowledge.

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2020

This paper explains and defends a belief-first view of the relationship between belief and credence. On this view, credences are a species of beliefs, and the degree of credence is determined by the content of what is believed. We begin by developing what we take to be the most plausible belief-first view. Then, we offer several arguments for it. Finally, we show how it can resist objections that have been raised to belief-first views. We conclude that the belief-first view is more plausible than many have previously supposed.

The Cambridge Companion to Religious Epistemology , 2022

Faith in God conflicts with reason—or so we’re told. We focus on two arguments for this conclusion. After evaluating three criticisms of them, we identify an assumption they share, namely that faith in God requires belief that God exists. Whether the assumption is true depends on what faith is. We sketch a theory of faith that allows for both faith in God without belief that God exists, and faith in God while in belief-cancelling doubt God’s existence. We then argue that our theory, unlike the theory of Thomas Aquinas, makes sense of four central items of faith-data: (i) pístis in the Synoptics, (ii) ʾemunāh in the Hebrew scriptures, (iii) exemplars of faith in God, including Abraham, Jesus, and Mother Teresa, and (iv) the widespread experience of people of faith today. We close by assessing revisions of the two arguments we began with, revisions that align with our theory of faith, and find them dubious, at best.

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2012

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2018

On doxastic theories of propositional faith, necessarily, S has faith that p only if S believes that p. On nondoxastic theories of propositional faith, it’s false that, necessarily, S has faith that p only if S believes that p. In this essay, I state three arguments for nondoxastic theories of faith and I respond to criticism of them.