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KNOWLEDGE AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2021

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Abstract

Introductions to epistemology routinely define knowledge as a kind of belief which meets certain criteria. In the first two sections of this article, I discuss this account and its application to religious epistemology by the influential movement known as Reformed Epistemology. In the last section, I argue that the controversial consequences drawn from this account by Reformed Epistemology offer one of the best illustrations of the untenability of a conception of knowledge as a kind of belief. I conclude by sketching an alternative account of cognition which also provides a different framework for religious epistemology.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 2021

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References

Notes

1 For a fuller discussion of these issues see Antognazza, Maria Rosa, ‘Belief, Religious Belief, and Faith’, in a special issue on ‘Kinds of Belief’ of the Rivista di Filosofia 110(2) (2019): 283306Google Scholar, on which the following remarks are based.

2 Plantinga, Alvin, ‘Is Belief in God Properly Basic?’, Noûs 15(1) (1981): 4151CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 43.

3 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, ‘Religious Epistemology’, in Wainwright, William J. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; hereafter RE), 245–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 269.

4 Plantinga, Alvin, Warrant: The Current Debate (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plantinga, Alvin, Warrant and Proper Function (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plantinga, Alvin, Warranted Christian Belief (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; hereafter WCB)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 This proposal will be developed in Maria Rosa Antognazza, Thinking with Assent: Renewing a Traditional Account of Knowledge and Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).