Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T18:25:51.925Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The epistemological limits of experience-based exclusive religious belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2008

ERIK BALDWIN
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, 100 N. University St, West Lafayette, IN 47907
MICHAEL THUNE
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, 100 N. University St, West Lafayette, IN 47907

Abstract

Alvin Plantinga and other philosophers have argued that exclusive religious belief can be rationally held in response to certain experiences – independently of inference to other beliefs, evidence, arguments, and the like – and thus can be ‘properly basic’. We think that this is possible only until the believer acquires the defeater we develop in this paper, a defeater which arises from an awareness of certain salient features of religious pluralism. We argue that, as a consequence of this defeater, continued epistemic support for exclusive religious belief will require the satisfaction of non-basic epistemic criteria (such as evidence and/or argumentation). But then such belief will no longer be properly basic. If successful, we will have presented a challenge not only to Plantinga's position, but also to the general view (often referred to as ‘reformed epistemology’) according to which exclusive religious belief can be properly basic.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Conee, Earl and Richard, Feldman (2004) Evidentialism: Essays in Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1993b) Warrant and Proper Function (New York NY: Oxford University Press). (2000) Warranted Christian Belief (New York NY: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shafer-Landau, Russ (2003) Moral Realism: A Defence (New York NY: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silver, David (2001) ‘Religious experience and the facts of religious pluralism’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 49, 117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swinburne, Richard (2001) Epistemic Justification (New York NY: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogelstein, Eric (2004) ‘Religious pluralism and justified Christian belief: a reply to Silver’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 55, 187192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar