This chapter explores the implications of the new status of belief by reconsidering traditional arguments for the existence of God. If disbelief in the supernatural was not a live option before the appearance of modern secularity, what was the point of articulating proofs of God’s existence? This chapter shows that the so-called classical proofs performed a very different function to the one that they were later to assume, being more akin to spiritual exercises than logical arguments constructed from neutral premises. Crucially, one of the central ‘proofs’—that based on universal consensus—involved an appeal to the ubiquity and universality of religious belief. The demise of this ‘argument’ in the early modern period signalled a major change in how belief in the supernatural came to be understood, indicating that the burden of proof was shifting from unbelievers to believers. This was accompanied by a new conception of natural theology, understood as an enterprise that could provide support for religious belief on rational grounds alone. The changing status of natural theology and proofs for God’s existence correlated directly with the appearance of a new notion of belief and the requirements for its justification.

This chapter examines reliabilist theories of justification and Sosa's virtue epistemology. We look at the new evil demon problem and the problem of unknown reliability. We examine Sosa's virtue and his distinctions between accurate, adroit, and apt belief.

Chapter 4 develops the information economy framework further by exploring two of its essential elements. In particular, the chapter further explores the nature of social environments and social-cognitive abilities. One central idea is that social environments are “layered” in ways that create various kinds of transmission channels. In particular, social environments are shaped in part by (a) interpersonal relationships, (b) social norms, (c) institutional rules, and (d) positive law. These various dimensions constitute a kind of “social space” that practical-cognitive agents must navigate. Such space is also “contoured,” in ways that affect the flow of information. A related idea is that practical-cognitive agents must embody various social-cognitive capacities, including linguistic capacities, mind-reading capacities, and what one might call “social sensibilities”; that is, awareness of one’s location in social space.

Tyler Burge first introduced his distinction between epistemic entitlement and epistemic justification in ‘Content Preservation’ in 1993. He has since deployed the distinction in over twenty papers, changing his formulation around 2011. His distinction and its basis, however, is not well understood in the literature. This chapter distinguishes two uses of ‘entitlement’ in Burge and then focuses on the contrast between justification and entitlement, two forms of warrant, where warrants consists in the exercise of a reliable belief-forming competence. Since he draws the distinction in terms of reasons, this chapter brings his account of reasons altogether in one place. The chapter introduces a decision-procedure for classifying warrants as justifications or entitlements. The distinction is not the same as the inferential vs. non-inferential distinction. Inference is distinguished from processing, thinking, reasoning, and critically reasoning. Burge’s new formulation of the distinction was driven by the recognition of non-accessible modular reasons. Three kinds of access are distinguished.