Jonathan L. Kvanvig

I came to epistemology through an interest in the concept of rationality, and especially through the attacks on the rationality of religious believers. My thoughts at the time focused on the disappointing quality of the arguments for and against religious belief, and I recall being astonished at the time that philosophers capable of such penetrating insight in other areas had nothing that seemed either penetrating or original. The defenders sounded too much like mere apologists for the faith, and the attackers arid and dull, with both sides often exuding a scent of intellectual dishonesty.

The standard view concerning types of theories of justification is that there are two types of theories: foundational and coherence theories. Foundationalism is generally taken to be what I call Minimal Foundationalism, which is a weaker form of foundationalism than Classical Foundationalism. I argue that this taxonomical scheme is inadequate since it fails to separate theories that are intuitively different, and it places some theories that are avowedly of one sort in the other type of theory. ;A different classification scheme depending on a distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is then offered. That distinction concerns whether what a person thinks, or is able to think on simple reflection, concerning his having met certain conditions for justification affects his justification. The two possible effects are that the satisfaction of a condition for justification entails that a person is able to think that this condition is satisfied, and that a person's ability to think that a condition is satisfied entails that that condition is satisfied. Thus, the most subjective theory possible is when a mutual entailment relation holds between these conditions and a person's possible thoughts about these conditions. I then show how this classification scheme is able to properly characterize many actual theories of justification, and how it can enlighten one as to the nature of different sorts of theories. ;The major task undertaken is to show that a completely subjective theory of justification is adequate to that sort of justification relevant to knowledge. A completely subjective theory of justification claims that it is logically necessary and sufficient for a belief to be justified that, roughly, the person is able to think on simple reflection that the belief is justified. It is defended that when this sort of justification is undefeated and occurs with true belief, knowledge is the result. Thus, contrary to the major views concerning knowledge in the history of philosophy, quite an extensive degree of subjectivity in justification is compatible with out intuitions concerning knowledge

This is the sixth volume of the Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion series. As with earlier volumes, these chapters follow the tradition of providing a non-sectarian and non-partisan snapshot of the subdiscipline of philosophy of religion. This subdiscipline has become an increasingly important one within philosophy over the last century, and especially over the past half century, having emerged as an identifiable subfield within this time frame along with other emerging subfields such as the philosophy of science and the philosophy of language. This volume continues the initial intention behind the series of attracting the best work from the premier philosophers of religion, as well as including top philosophers outside this area when their work and interests intersect with issues in the philosophy of religion. This inclusive approach to the series provides an opportunity to mitigate some of the costs of greater specialization in our disciplines, while at the same time inviting greater interest in the work being done in the philosophy of religion.

The Swamping Problem is one of the central problems in the new valuedriven approach to epistemology that has arisen recently. Issues concerning epistemic value, however, are not new. We can find them first in Plato’s dialogue Meno, where Socrates and Meno have a discussion about what type of guide one should prefer if one wants to get to Larissa. The first suggestion is that one should want a guide who knows the way, but Socrates notes that a guide with true opinions will work just as well. Meno’s response to Socrates’ objection raises precisely the correct worries: he wonders about the nature of knowledge (whether it differs from true opinion) and about the value of knowledge (why we prize it over true opinion). The point of view of value-driven epistemology is that a myopic focus on the former question is a mistake and that questions about the value of knowledge and other epistemic phenomena are important in their own right and can help evaluate the adequacy of proposals concerning the nature of knowledge and other epistemic phenomena.

Every religion offers both hope and fear. They offer hope in virtue of the benefits promised to adherents, and fear in virtue of costs incurred by adversaries. In traditional Christianity, the costs incurred are expressed in terms of the doctrine of hell, according to which each person consigned to hell receives the same infinite punishment. This strong view of hell involves four distinct theses. First, it maintains that those in hell exist forever in that state (the Existence Thesis) and that at least some human persons will end up in hell (the Anti-Universalism Thesis). Once in hell, there is no possibility of escape (the No Escape Thesis), and the justification of and purpose for hell is to mete out punishment to those whose earthly lives and character deserve it (the Retribution Thesis).