Jonathan L. Kvanvig

Philosophical reflection concerning heaven and hell has focused on the place of such doctrines in the great monotheistic religions emanating from the religion of the ancient people of Israel--Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The philosophical issues that arise concerning these doctrines is not limited to such traditions, however. Consider, for example, the doctrine of hell. Any religion promises certain benefits to its adherents, and these benefits require some contrast that befalls, or might befall, those who fail to adhere to the religion in question.

Epistemologists often offer theories of justification without paying much attention to the variety and diversity of locutions in which the notion of justification appears. For example, consider the following claims which contain some notion of justification: B is a justified belief, S's belief that p is justified, p is justified for S, S is justified in believing that p, S justifiably believes that p, S's believing p is justified, there is justification for S to believe that p, there is justification for S's believing p, and S has a justification for believing that p. In addition to these passive uses of the notion of justification, there are active uses as well: S justified his belief in p, believing e justifies believing p, etc. The syntactic variety involves semantic difference as well. For example, the proposition S has a justification for believing that p does not entail that S believes p, whereas the proposition S justifiably believes that p does entail that S believes p. Our ultimate goal is to show that this diversity is only superficial by arguing that there is a basic kind of justification. On the way, however, we shall argue that there are three central uses of a notion of justifica- tion in the above list: propositional justification (as in p is justified for S), personal justification (as in S is justified in believing that p) and doxastic justification (as in S's believing p is justified). Our preliminary argument will be that the multiplicity above can be explained in terms of these three locutions, and the substance of our argument will be to show that one of these three is the basic kind of justification. Success in this task will thereby justify, at least in part, the practice of contem- porary epistemologists. Our conclusions, however, shall not be of much comfort to contemporary epistemology, for the way in which the apparent diversity in the uses of the notion of justification is eliminated undermines much of recent epistemology.

Einstein was notoriously confident that God doesn’t play dice with the universe. Perhaps it is a confidence born of a deeper modal presumption: that Godcouldn’t play dice with the universe. If so, such confidence almost certainly disappoints. Even if God doesn’t play dice with the universe, he might. Thus arises the issue here addressed: what implications does this datum have for a proper understanding of divine providence? My interest is in theories that aim to present complete theories of providence, ones that refuse to relegate anything that happens to a domain falling outside the scope of providence. What we can learn about the parts of it that are most promising for a fully satisfying theory of providence, in light of the dice-playing possibility?

In recent years, epistemologists have become increasingly impressed with reliabilist theories of justification. 1 Reliabilism is often formulated as the claim that a belief is justified 2 just in case it is a reliable belief; however, this formulation can be somewhat misleading. There is a sense in which a set of beliefs can be reliable, just as a certain history or testimony can be reliable: what one means is that a certain set of propositions is highly accurate, has mostly true members, or is not wrong in any important way. Reliabilists, though, do not just want to say that a belief is justified just in case it is a member of a type with mostly true members, i.e., just in case it is probably true; they also want to appeal to the notion of reliability in that sense in which we say that persons, processes, proce­dures, tests, and experiments are reliable. Reliabilism is a view both about the reliability of beliefs and about the reliability of the person who has the belief or the procedure that is responsible for the belief.

The view I've been defending in the theory of justification I have termed ‘propositionalism’. It counsels beginning inquiry into the nature of justification by adopting a particular form of evidentialism, according to which the first task is to describe the abstract relation of evidencing that holds between propositional contents. Such an approach has a variety of implications for the theory of justification itself, and many of the motivations for the view are of a standard internalist variety. Some of these motivations will be described in due course, but there is also a further motivation to mention here as well. Such a theory, beyond enabling a theory to satisfy typical internalist strictures, also allows a strong relationship between the theory of justification and more standard confirmation theory where claims are confirmed and disconfirmed by information gleaned from experiments and other sources. It is a natural and pleasing result if confirmation theory can be embedded within the theory of justification developed in the context of more traditional epistemology.

One of the central claims of Williamson's ground-breaking epistemology is the claim that knowledge is the norm of assertion. This chapter contends that this viewpoint is mistaken. It first explains Williamson's path to the conclusion he holds, identifying the two major arguments that he uses to support his claim that knowledge is the norm of assertion. It summarizes the _prima facie_ case for an alternative view, and then addresses the tension between this _prima facie_ case and Williamson's arguments. The chapter argues that a proper resolution of the conflict results in a denial of the idea that knowledge is the norm of assertion. Instead, to the extent that appropriate assertion is subject to epistemic constraints, those constraints have to do with justification rather than knowledge.

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.

There are two different kinds of theories of the concept of epistemic defeat. One theory begins with propositional relationships, only by implication describing what happens in the context of a noetic system. Such a theory places inforrmation about defeat up front, not informing us of how the defeat relationships play out in the context of actual belief, at least not initially. The other theory takes a back door to the concept of defeat, assuming a context of actual belief and an entire noetic system, and describing defeat in terms of what sort of doxastic and noetic responses would be appropriate to the addition of particular pieces of information. Where the house is the noetic structure itself, the front door approach characterizes the concept of defeat in terms of the propositional contents a belief might have, thus characterizing defeat at the front door. The backdoor approach characterizes defeat in terms of what leaves the house, in terms of beliefs that exit the noetic system in response to changes to it, in terms of what the staff of a well-run household kicks out the backdoor for making a mess of things. Alvin Plantinga’s theory of epistemic defeat is a back-door theory, and here I will argue that his theory and approaches like it will be unable to explicate accurately the concept of epistemic defeat. I will argue that a front door approach is needed rather than a back door approach

representations, for the unconditioned transcendent surpasses every possible conception of a being, including even the conception of a Supreme Being... It is the religious function of atheism ever to remind us that the religious act has to do with the unconditioned transcendent, and that the representations of the Unconditioned are not objects concerning whose existence.., a discussion would be possible. The word >God= involves a double meaning: it connotes the unconditioned transcendent, the ultimate, and also an object somehow endowed with qualities and actions. The first is not figurative or symbolic, but is rather in the strictest sense what it is said to be. The second, however, is really symbolic, figurative. = Tillich=s view on transcendence is a quite radical view. However, his view serves to illustrate two things: (i) the importance of the concept of transcendence in discussions about God, and (ii) the implications for religious language resulting from God..

THE DOCTRINE OF omniscience has been understood in two ways. Roughly, it has been taken either as the claim that God knows all that is true (Geach, Kvanvig 1986) or as the claim that God knows all that can be known (Swinbume; Mavrodes). The first construal I shall call the traditional construal, and the second I shall call a limited construal. Though the traditional construal would seem to be the natural one to hold, considerations of the analogy between the best construals of the doctrine of omnipotence have suggested to some that a limited construal is prefera)1e. In particular, some have claimed that one should be careful to construe the doctrine of omnipotence, not as the..