Benjamin McCraw

This project explores the intersection of two lively debates in epistemology that have not yet engaged with each other: accounts of group belief in collective epistemology and work the nature of epistemic trust. As social epistemology has come to occupy a central role in epistemology over the past several decades, we’ve seen the amount of work on both collective belief and epistemic trust explode. However, despite the literature in both fields booming, we haven’t yet seen any sustained examination of how these currently separate literatures might be intersected and interconnected. This paper begins such an examination. Given the many accounts of _both_ collective belief _and_ epistemic trust, these different literatures can provide different axes along which to vary models of collective trust. Explicating and exploring these different models may serve as options ripe for more examination by social epistemologists.

I argue against the transmission view in the epistemology of testimony by providing a new kind of case: bullshit knowledge. The transmission view implies that a hearer can come to have testimonial knowledge that p due to a speaker’s testimony that p only if the speaker knows that p. While there are several cases challenging this implication, bullshit testimony does so differently. If a hearer can gain knowledge from a speaker’s bullshit testimony, they obtain what I call bullshit knowledge. And bullshit testimonial knowledge defeats the transmission view differently than the other cases in the literature. When testimony is bullshit, something besides the speaker’s concern for the truth or falsity of what they say grounds their assertion. Thus, even if the speaker otherwise knows p or is in an epistemically flawless position regarding p, the fact that their testimony is bullshit necessarily isolates their assertion from whatever epistemic state it or the speaker has. Thus, bullshit testimony couldn’t be the sort of thing that could even possible transmit any epistemic properties via a speaker’s assertion. This is unique amongst the objections to the transmission view, and bullshit knowledge, thus, provides previously unappreciated insights into the epistemology of testimony.

This chapter extends the discussion of Stoic moral theory from Chap. 4 to argue that the Stoics offer the kind of internalism—(Aretaic Internalism2)—our unorthodox approach to epistemic virtue requires. We need an internalism such that the value of virtue derives from the way that we seek its target rather than from the aimed-at state/object itself. First, the Stoics offer a moral version of epistemic internalism: an action need not have external success to count as virtuous. Second, the Stoic distinction between an appropriate action and perfect/right action gives an example of our two actions can differ along their axiological statuses even if the content, effects, etc. remain identical. A perfect action differs from an appropriate only insofar as the former (but not the latter) is grounded by the Sage’s knowledge and consistent character. an action is perfect because of how the agent “produces” it, rather than by the agent’s aim or intention in acting. Thus, the Stoics provide a moral version of Chap. 3’s (Aretaic Internalism2), which is precisely the sort of theoretical framework our virtue epistemology needs to reject EVE and ESE orthodoxy.

At the end of the previous chapter, we found that a virtue-theoretic approach to epistemic value might be able to offer us a non-ESE approach to reject its hyper orthodoxy. So, what would (or could) rejecting ESE look like when directed along virtue-theoretic lines? This chapter explores this question in more detail. What we should notice first is that, once we shift our focus to epistemic virtue, a second epistemological orthodoxy regarding the nature of epistemic virtues comes into view; namely, epistemic externalism. After we examine this second orthodoxy in more depth, we’ll examine a cluster of interrelated objections to it. Finally, we’ll see how this second orthodoxy inherits the TTP and VERITY objections from Chap. 2, adherents to the second externalist orthodoxy are versions of ESE. Thus, unless we can offer an unorthodox account of epistemic virtue, a virtue-theoretic approach to ESE orthodoxy cannot succeed. Since our second orthodoxy is externalism, the way forward must reject this. Thus, we’ll defend an internalist epistemology. We’ll point towards this at the end, but a generic internalism won’t suffice. A more nuanced internalism with respect to epistemic virtue will need to take more care with our epistemic aims and values as well as how they bear on virtue. First, though, we shall need to get clearer on our second orthodoxy about epistemic virtue.

In this chapter, we briefly explore Stoic moral theory so that it can give us a framework for the unorthodox, internalist virtue epistemology that we seek. First, I argue that Stoic moral theory can help us: the shape of their ethics responds, in part, to parallel worries from previous chapters. Thus, perhaps surprisingly, Stoic moral theory should be helpful to our epistemological aim. Next, we address Stoic axiology. Central to their account of the good is a swarm of seemingly different formulae: the good is virtue, following nature, etc. However, the Stoics take all of these to be equivalent to each other and, in typical eudaimonist fashion, to happiness, eudaimonia, the good life, one’s telos, and so on. Accordingly, we identify the good with virtue and not with any “external” (e.g. wealth, health, etc.). These are values but not goods: their renowned doctrine of “preferred indifferents”. Finally, we look at Stoic virtue. They conceive of virtue as a kind of skill or craft (that of living), and they understand it in terms of a stochastic skill. These are skills where their correct deployment does not require success in their immediate aim. For instance, an archer can shoot skillfully and not get a bullseye. We will use these Stoic moral doctrines as the framework to understand epistemic values and virtue in later chapters.

In this brief introduction, we lay out the motivations and maneuvers for the work. We begin with reflections on epistemic value. Though a diversity of accounts of such value are offered and discussed, we should note something previous unnoticed: that they, for all their differences, share a common assumption about the nature of fundamental epistemic value. Specifically, they assume that the sort of thing that bears fundamental epistemic value is an end state produced by cognition. We’ll term this an orthodoxy with respect to epistemic value. Rejecting this unseen orthodoxy motivates the current work. We’ll also see another, more often recognized, orthodoxy in virtue epistemology; namely, epistemological externalism. Thus, we need a theory that can reject both orthodoxies—i.e. a radically unorthodox epistemology. This will be an internalist virtue epistemology. Yet, internalism by itself won’t suffice: we need a radically new account of epistemic value. For this, we turn to the ancient Stoics. Thus, we’ll seek a neo-Stoic virtue epistemology which offers us the heretical rejection of the twin orthodoxies mentioned above.

In this concluding chapter, we examine the neo-Stoic virtue epistemology developed in light of its central theoretical aims. First, I argue that neo-Stoic virtue epistemology has no problem with the central worries for the major accounts of epistemic value –i.e. the Trivial Truths Problem and VERITY—and can easily address the Externalism and Epistemic Luck Worry leveled at extant theories of epistemic virtue. Next, I argue that neo-Stoic virtue epistemology satisfies the various theoretical desiderata from Sect. 3.2.3. This implies that neo-Stoic virtue epistemology clearly and decisively rejects both EVE and ESE orthodoxy. Thus, neo-Stoic virtue epistemology provides us with the radical epistemological heresy we have sought.

In this chapter, we begin constructing our neo-Stoic virtue epistemology. From Chap. 4, we get a discussion of Stoic moral theory—in particular, the Stoic account of value and virtue. The first two sections of Chap. 6 follow the Stoics to sketch parallel principles for epistemology. Specifically, this chapter defends: (1) The epistemic telos/goal is identical to epistemic virtue (=believing epistemically virtuously), (2*) Epistemic virtue (=believing epistemically virtuously) is the sole bearer of fundamental epistemic value (i.e. virtue is the sole epistemic good), (3) Positively evaluated end states (e.g. true belief, knowledge, understanding, justified belief) have non-fundamental epistemic value (=they are epistemically preferred indifferents), and (4*) Epistemic virtue is a kind of stochastic skill (=a skill that admits of a telos/skopos distinction). (1) follows from the Stoic insistence that virtue is the good, and (2*) specifies that only virtue as such fundamental value. Their doctrine of preferred indifferents influences (3): the end states in question are like externals with value but not goodness. Finally (4*) extends the Stoic conception of moral virtue as a skill to epistemology. However, we have only a formal notion of virtue—what’s missing, so far, is an account of epistemic virtue specified in (1)–(4*) with more determinate content. We turn to this task in the next chapter.

Chapter 7 continues Chap. 6’s extension of Stoic moral theory to epistemology. We are left with three theoretical gaps. First, we need a substantive account of the content of epistemic virtue. Second, we need to explain how virtue can ground a unified cognitive character. And, finally, we need an epistemological parallel to the Stoic distinction between right and appropriate action. I contend that an approach to epistemic conscientiousness, when read in light of some key Stoic commitments, resolves these problems. I analyze epistemically conscientious belief as belief which would survive the conscious self-scrutiny of the rational agent. This model, I argue, bears important connections to the core Stoic doctrines of seeing one’s telos as following nature and defining virtue as a stable consistency of character. Thus, we obtain the final parts of the internalist virtue epistemology we seek: (5) Epistemic virtue is a reflection of epistemic conscientiousness and (6*) Epistemically virtuous beliefs differ from epistemically justified beliefs by virtue of the way that they are formed, held, etc. Combined with (1)–(4*) from Chap. 6, these complete our neo-Stoic virtue epistemology.

In this chapter, we’ll survey and challenge the major extant approaches to fundamental epistemic value. Though important differences hold among the different versions of each theory type as well as the theories themselves, our first point in this chapter will be to show that these differences betray a more obscure agreement. Even though one particular view—affirming true belief as that which possesses fundamental epistemic value—is considered to be “orthodoxy” by some, it falls into a deeper agreement even with its “unorthodox” rivals. Hence, we can see this first order orthodoxy and its detractors as committed an underlying hyper orthodoxy (as I’ll call it) regarding the type of thing that bears fundamental epistemic value. Discussing these extant accounts of such value will help us see the hyper orthodoxy that unifies them all. As we’ll see, they all assume that some kind of end state produced by cognition must bear fundamental epistemic value. Thus, we can see all of these diverse approaches to epistemic value as a species of one general approach that I term End State Epistemology (ESE). With ESE thus conceived, we will examine two serious difficulties that its (extant) forms face—the Trivial Truths Problem and a variant of the New Evil Demon Problem that I call VERITY. While these objections give us, in my view, decisive reason to reject ESE hyper orthodoxy, they also point us towards a response that we’ll begin examining in Chap. 3—i.e. virtue epistemology.

This chapter develops and defends a neo-Stoic approach to epistemic vice, modelled on the account of virtue from Chaps. 6 and 7. After briefly canvasing some central Stoic claims about the nature of moral vice, we intersect these with the six principles we’ve analyzed as neo-Stoic virtue. Thus, we obtain six principles of neo-Stoic epistemic vice. (1VICE) The epistemic un-telos/anti-goal is identical to epistemic vice (=believing epistemically viciously). (2*VICE) Epistemic vice (=believing epistemically viciously) is the sole bearer of epistemically fundamental negative axiological status (i.e. vice is the sole epistemic bad). (3VICE) Negatively evaluated end states (e.g. false belief, ignorance, lack of understanding, unjustified belief) have non-fundamental epistemic dis-value (=they are epistemically dis-preferred indifferents). (4*VICE) Epistemic vice is a kind of stochastic cognitive dis-skill (where we understand dis-skill as the consistent deployment of poor performance rather than merely lacking skill). (5VICE) Epistemic vice is a reflection of epistemic un-conscientiousness (where un-conscientiousness is understood as (EpUnConsc)). (6*VICE) Epistemically vicious beliefs differ from epistemically unjustified beliefs by virtue of the way that they are formed, held, etc. Finally, I argue that the neo-Stoic vice epistemology constituted by (1VICE)–(6*VICE): (1) is distinct from motivationalism and obstructivism, (2) rejects ESE and EVE orthodoxy, and (3) addresses problems for both motivationalism and obstructivism.

Chapter 8 begins our discussion of vice epistemology and the development of a neo-Stoic vice epistemology (which Chap. 9 will complete). First, we examine the extant approaches to epistemic vice. As epistemic virtue is often divided into two camps (reliabilists and responsibilist), vice epistemology includes two major, competing general approaches. The obstructivist construes an epistemic vice as, essentially, a trait that systemically prevents the getting, keeping, or sharing of knowledge. Motivationalism with respect to epistemic vice is the view which sees the heart of vice as deficient motivation: epistemic vicious belief is belief that is insufficiently grounded in the motive to get to the truth. With these views explained, the chapter deploys two kinds of worries for them. The first appeals to the same problematic orthodoxies that prompts our whole discussion: EVE and ESE. I argue that obstructivism is committed to both EVE and ESE orthodoxy and that motivationalism, while possibly rejecting EVE, must nevertheless endorse ESE. If we want a genuinely unorthodox epistemology, neither obstructivism nor motivationalism fit the bill. Second, each approach faces its own worry external to our discussion so far. The obstructivist, like the virtue reliabilist with which it has an affinity, will have trouble with Evil Demon worlds: in them our standard vices promote knowledge and our virtues obstruct it. We get the standard counterintuitive view that the obstructivist must count virtues as vices and vices as virtues in such worlds. Second, the motivationalist will face counterexamples where an intuitively vicious agent cares about the truth and tries to obtain it. Thus, motivationalism cannot correctly diagnose what goes wrong with such cases. We need a new account of epistemic vice: Chap. 9 develop such an account based on our neo-Stoic theory from Chaps. 6 and 7.

In contradistinction to the many monographs and edited volumes devoted to historical, cultural, or theological treatments of demonology, this collection features newly written papers by philosophers and other scholars engaged specifically in philosophical argument, debate, and dialogue involving ideas and topics in demonology. The contributors to the volume approach the subject from the perspective of the broadest areas of Western philosophy, namely metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and moral philosophy. The collection also features a plurality of religious, cultural, and theological views on the nature of demons from both Eastern and Western thought, in addition to views that may diverge from these traditional roots. _Philosophical Approaches to Demonology_ will be of interest to philosophers of religion, theologians, and scholars working in philosophical theology and demonology, as well as historians, cultural anthropologists, and sociologists interested more broadly in the concept of demons.

This monograph works at the intersection of two of the most popular and growing fields in epistemology: epistemic normativity or value and virtue epistemology. By challenging two hitherto un- or under-explored sets of assumptions—epistemological orthodoxies—operative in those fields and, by rejecting them, the book develops novel approaches to current theories of epistemic value and virtue. The book argues that what is needed is an internalist (i.e. non-externalist) mode of epistemic virtue. To accomplish this, it draws on Stoic moral theory, whereby the deployment of virtue—no matter whether one has any ‘external’ success—suffices for completely successful action.

In this paper, I defend a line of reasoning from Thomas Reid against skepticism. Often philosophers turn to Reid to attack skepticism, but the argument with which I am concerned with is ignored by most contemporary Reidian approaches. Instead of the more famous parity-based argument against skepticism, I propose a Reidian transcendental argument against skepticism. Reid argues that if the skeptic is to argue at all for skepticism, then they undermine the very possibility of a cogent pro-skepticism argument. Reid emphasizes the role of reason and learning early in life on our ability to formulate, understand, and evaluate arguments later in life. Our argumentative thinking now depends necessarily on our good cognitive development in the past. The skeptic, in attacking either our beliefs or their epistemic status in general, undercuts the early pre-conditions for logical thought. By emphasizing just how much cognitive well-foundedness logic requires, skeptical arguments undermine themselves: they are self-referentially undercutting.

This paper defends a quasi-doxastic model of propositional faith whereby faith that p entails a disposition to believe that p. I argue for this model set against its main competitors: doxasticism and non-doxasticism. I survey several key arguments in the debate and argue that the quasi-doxastic approach can better affirm and explain a range of considerations provided by such arguments. Then I turn to a set of theoretical explananda that, again, I argue quasi-doxastic faith is uniquely placed to explain. I end with an indirect consideration: that a quasi-doxastic approach to faith reorients or redirects religious epistemology away from proposition-centric rationality to agent-centric accounts of rationality.

This work lies at the juncture between religious epistemology and virtue epistemology. Currently, both fields in epistemology are burgeoning with interest and novel theories, arguments, and applications. However, there is no systematic or sustained overlap between the two. I aim to provide such a systematic connection. Virtue epistemology holds that epistemology should turn away from analyzing person-neutral concepts like evidence, reliability, etc. as the primary locus of analysis in favor of person-based properties like intellectual character traits. I develop and defend a virtue-theoretic approach to religious epistemology; arguing that, in certain circumstances, faith can be an act of epistemic virtue. After developing my own account of epistemic virtue, I turn to an analysis of epistemic trust and argue that such trust is an epistemic virtue. To place epistemic trust in someone is to be disposed to see him/her as a kind of intellectual authority and depend on that authority—a kind relying confidence or confidence reliance. Next, I analyze the conceptual connections between faith and epistemic trust—arguing that robust religious faith is a species of epistemic trust. We should see faith as an expression of epistemic trust in certain ways; namely, for religious matters and for beliefs that matter deeply to one’s overall intellectual, moral, pragmatic, etc. worldview. Given my argument(s) that epistemic trust is a virtue, it follows that faith is a particular expression of that virtue. Therefore, faith (when expressed properly) is epistemically virtuous qua act of epistemic virtue. We have an epistemological analysis of faith rooted systemically and deeply in virtue epistemology. The overall upshot is that genuine faith expresses a epistemically virtuous character via trust and, as such, can confer positive epistemic status on religious beliefs. Moreover, genuine faith must fit the same framework as other virtues: it must admit of a mean between excess and deficiency, it must come under the direction of practical wisdom, it must be consistent with other virtues, and other key criteria. I end by discussing how my approach addresses serious issues in religious epistemology and I locate it in the landscape of major theories of proper religious belief.

Here, I explore a modernist aesthetics of death metal. First, I briefly describe a few themes that characterize some modern art, without any claim that they are necessary, sufficient, or exhaustive. The goal is to obtain a set of themes that might be set against similar themes characteristic of death metal. This is the task in the second half of the paper. In particular, I argue that (some) modernist art and death metal share themes centered on transgressively breaking with the past, pursue their conception of the truth, eliminate elements in their art form to purity them, and attack the art/non-art or music/non-music distinction. I contend that centering on death metal vocals reflects these themes. Death metal growls, like some modernist art, transgresses on past vocal traditions, tells us important truths, eliminates traditional concepts/techniques of signing, and undermines the singing/noise distinction.

In this article, I explore a Wittgensteinian approach to blasphemy. While philosophy of religion tends to have very little to say about blasphemy, we can note two key, typically unchallenged, assumptions about it. First, there is the Assertion from Anywhere Assumption: whether one can successfully blaspheme is entirely independent of one’s religious views, commitments, or way of life. Second, there is the Act of Communication Assumption: blasphemy is essentially an act of assertion. I contend that a Wittgensteinian approach rejects both assumptions and, thus, reorients our conception of blasphemy. Take two characteristically Wittgensteinian claims. First, religious statements/beliefs have a different ‘grammar’ than empirical propositions. Second (and relatedly), holding religious beliefs necessarily connects with how one lives. Wittgensteinian blasphemy rejects the Assertion from Anywhere Assumption: to blaspheme, one must be in or have been in the religious framework one blasphemes. Being entirely outside of that context divests one’s blasphemy from its proper content. Second, Wittgensteinian blasphemy rejects the Act of Communication Assumption: if religious belief is centrally a form of life, then blasphemy must be lived out as well. Wittgensteinian blasphemy is less about the utterances one makes and more about how one’s life intersects (or fails to intersect) with religiosity.

Recent approaches to the social epistemology of belief formation have appealed to an epidemiological model, on which the mechanisms explaining how we form beliefs from our society or community along the lines of infectious disease. More specifically, Alvin Goldman (2001) proposes an etiology of (social) belief along the lines of an epistemological epidemiology. On this “contagion model,” beliefs are construed as diseases that infect people via some socio-epistemic community. This paper reconsiders Goldman’s epidemiological approach in terms of epistemic trust. By focusing on beliefs as diseases, Goldman misconstrues and underestimates the central role that epistemic trust plays in their formation (maintenance, revision, etc.). I suggest that we put trust, accordingly, as the center of an epidemiological model of social doxology—epistemic trust, rather than beliefs, is the disease with which one is infected. So, contra Goldman, beliefs themselves aren’t the disease—they are symptoms. Trust, on this approach, can be viewed as a pathology. This point connects Annette Baier’s (1994) work on moral trust—taking a cue from her “pathologies of trust.” The real pathology centered in social doxology is the epistemic trust manifested by those beliefs. Accordingly, I shall explore (and tentatively defend) an epidemiological model for such “pathological” epistemic trust inspired by Baier’s work on moral trust, one which can more adequately account for the infectious epistemic trust at work in social belief formation.

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'naturalistic fallacy'. The naturalistic fallacy follows from one's metaphysical (metaethical) commitments rather than simply a general defect of reasoning. Unlike many fallacies – formal or informal – it is not likely that one will find the naturalistic fallacy in standard logic textbooks. The natural properties (e.g., pleasure) are logically and/or metaphysically distinct from normative or moral properties (e.g., goodness) and, thus, any identification of a natural property with a normative property would be defective. G.E. Moore's metaphysics of values (metaethics) disallows any movement from natural to non‐natural properties. He thinks of normative properties/objects as logically and metaphysically distinct from non‐natural properties/objects. Yet if one rejects the wider non‐naturalistic moral realism central to Moore's naturalistic fallacy, it seems possible to accept a movement from the natural to normative.

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called appeal to ignorance (or ad ignorantiam). A few passages from classical philosophical texts may commit an argumentum ad ignorantiam. Richard Robison develops another way of launching an ad ignorantiam that works by using a rhetorical question to commit the illicit move: Woods and Walton describe the appeal to ignorance as a fallacy “located within confirmation theory as a confusion between the categories of 'lack of confirming evidence' and 'presence of disconfirming evidence'”. Wreen has argued that the ad ignorantiam maneuver is not fallacious, whereas other philosophers accept the general fallacy of an appeal to ignorance but note some instances where lack of evidence does provide good inductive grounds for some statement.

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, appeal to the people (ATP; also known as argumentum ad populum). ATP comes in two distinct variations. First, there is what Woods and Walton call the “argument from popularity”. On this view, an ATP occurs “whenever someone takes a belief to be true merely because large numbers of people accept it”. Another version is the “emotive” ATP, again in Woods and Walton's language. When this variant occurs, one attempts “to win popular assent to a conclusion by arousing the feelings of the multitude”. Here, the appeal is not to the beliefs or acceptances of the majority or populace but to their feelings or emotions.

In this paper, I assess Duncan Pritchard’s defense of the “orthodox” view on epistemic normativity. On this view, termed “epistemic value T-monism” (EVTM), only true belief has final value. Pritchard discusses three influential objections to EVTM: the swamping problem, the goal of inquiry problem, and the trivial truths problem. I primarily focus on Pritchard’s defense of the trivial truths problem: truth cannot be the only final epistemic value because we value “trivial” truths less than “significant” truths. In response, Pritchard appeals to epistemic virtue: the virtuous agent desires “substantial” truths, where “substantiality” is a matter of the non-luckiness of the true belief. Thus, what has substantial value, for Pritchard, is well-grounded true belief. Yet, I argue, this moves away from “orthodox” EVTM: this view fails to attribute final epistemic value to non-grounded, accidentally true belief. Aside from giving up EVTM altogether, I suggest this leads to either a revision or revolution. On the revision interpretation, EVTM was always imprecise: what orthodoxy always really cared about was epistemically grounded truth rather than truth simpliciter. On the revolutionary reading, what we really care about, contra orthodoxy, formation of belief in line with virtues rather than truth simpliciter.

Alston (2005) argues that there is no such thing as a single concept of epistemic justification. Instead, there is an irreducible plurality of epistemically valuable features of beliefs: ‘epistemic desiderata.’ I argue that this approach is problematic for meta-epistemological reasons. How, for instance, do we characterize epistemic evaluation and do we do we go about it if there’s no theoretical unity to epistemology? Alston’s response is to ground all epistemic desiderata, thereby unifying epistemology, in truth and truth-conduciveness. I argue that this move over-unifies epistemology, in effect, giving us a single criterion for epistemology on par with the epistemology-by-justification approach he rejects. Perhaps surprisingly, we find a similar theoretical worry in Aristotle’s argument about the science of metaphysics. Aristotle’s resolution in this problem by the ‘analogy of being’ provides a parallel framework to resolve the worries with Alston’s approach. In particular, I argue that we can focus epistemic evaluation on the person of epistemic virtue: this category will be focal, unifying the disparate desiderata, without reducing to one thing all epistemic values or relations that desiderate must bear to the central value. A virtue-centric account of epistemic normativity follows: one that can remain genuinely pluralistic and yet unified as well.

In this paper, I defend the claim that we have good reason to think that God can (and maybe does) answer prayers for the dead, and, perhaps surprisingly, these reasons hold even if one is agnostic on Purgatory. I examine philosophical discussions on the efficacy of both petitionary prayer and praying for the past: showing that the reasons offered for efficacious prayers of those types apply to prayers for the dead as well. Hence, supposing that we have good reasons to think that God can/does grant petitions or that God can answer prayers about the past, we have similarly strong reasons to think that prayers addressed to God for the dead can be efficacious.

My focus in this paper concerns the demonic from the perspective of Augustine and Aquinas. Much of their views on demons coincide with certain elements of the popular view, but a good bit also diverges in some interesting and important ways. In fact, their philosophical theology is essentially bound up with their overall demonology. I show that the aim of the demonic is to bring about conversion through temptation, and this “possession” is nothing but the person coming to be like demons in rejecting God. Described thusly, we can see the Devil and his demonic minions as having an inverse or perverse role in relation to that of Christ and his disciples (broadly construed) for philosophical theologians like Augustine and Aquinas.

In this paper, I examine several criticisms that can be raised against Aquinas’s Fourth Way. Each criticism draws a line of reasoning from a historical source to a contemporary analogue. The aim is to trace these objections from Aquinas’s own philosophical perspective to a contemporary standpoint: showing how arguments and positions today bear on his 13th C. argument and vice versa. Section One begins by reconstructing the argument itself. Then I address a series of objections questioning some fundamental element of Aquinas’ argument. Within each question/objection pair, we find a criticism aimed at a crucial aspect of the argument; thus giving us various possible ways to undermine it. The philosophical questions crucial to his argument make up Section Two and theological issues involved are the focus of Section Three. Aquinas’s argument goes through only if he can successfully address these series of objections and I argue that, ultimately, there are some questions he cannot adequately answer. Thus, the critique of the Fourth Way ends with a mixed bag of objections: some of the inadequate but some are successful in the long haul.

In this chapter I explore the possibility and prospects of what I’m calling reformed demonology, an extension of a reformed epistemology that includes belief in the Devil. I begin by characterizing reformed epistemology as denying the necessity of propositional evidence—via argument—for the positive epistemic status of a religious belief. I then turn to the influential reformed approaches of Alvin Plantinga and William Alston, seeing whether or not one can developed their Reformed approaches to beliefs about God to beliefs about the Devil. For Plantinga, this question amounts to whether or not God could/would have created us with a faculty designed to produce beliefs about the Devil immediately. For Alston, this question becomes one as to whether one lives in a community such that direct (quasi)perceptual experience of the Devil is made possible. In each case, I suggest that we find neither a ‘yes’ nor ‘no’ answer: Plantinga’s epistemology hinges on what sort of aims God would have in creating us and Alston’s on what sort of epistemic communities there are as well as in which one finds oneself. So, on either view, a Reformed Demonology is possible.