Religious people seem to believe things that range from the somewhat peculiar to the utterly bizarre. Or do they? According to a new paper by Neil Van Leeuwen, religious “credence” is nothing like mundane factual belief. It has, he claims, more in common with fictional imaginings. Religious folk do not really “believe”—in the ordinary sense of the word—what they profess to believe. Like fictional imaginings, but unlike factual beliefs, religious credences are activated only within specific settings. We argue that (...) Van Leeuwen’s thesis contradicts a wealth of data on religiously motivated behavior. By and large, the faithful genuinely believe what they profess to believe. Although many religions openly embrace a sense of mystery, in general this does not prevent the attribution of beliefs to religious people. Many of the features of religious belief that Van Leeuwen alludes to, like invulnerability to refutation and incoherence, are characteristic of irrational beliefs in general and actually betray... (shrink)

JOHN CORCORAN AND WAGNER SANZ, Disbelief Logic Complements Belief Logic. Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150 USA E-mail: [email protected] Filosofia, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiás, GO 74001-970 Brazil E-mail: [email protected] -/- Consider two doxastic states belief and disbelief. Belief is taking a proposition to be true and disbelief taking it to be false. Judging also dichotomizes: accepting a proposition results in belief and rejecting in disbelief. Stating follows suit: asserting a proposition (...) conveys belief and denying conveys disbelief. Traditional logic implicitly focused on logical relations and processes needed in expanding and organizing systems of beliefs. Deducing a conclusion from beliefs results in belief of the conclusion. Deduction presupposes consequence: one proposition is a consequence of a set of a propositions if the latter logically implies the former. The role of consequence depends on its being truth-preserving: every consequence of a set of truths is true. This paper, which builds on previous work by the second author, explores roles of logic in expanding and organizing systems of disbeliefs. Aducing a conclusion from disbeliefs results in disbelief of the conclusion. Aduction presupposes contrequence: one proposition is a contrequence of a set of propositions if the set of negations or contradictory opposites of the latter logically implies that of the former. The role of contrequence depends on its being falsity-preserving: every contrequence of a set of falsehoods is false. A system of aductions that includes, for every contrequence of a given set, an aduction of the contrequence from the set is said to be complete. Historical and philosophical discussion is illustrated and enriched by presenting complete systems of aductions constructed by the second author. One such, a natural aduction system for Aristotelian categorical propositions, is based on a natural deduction system attributed to Aristotle by the first author and others. ADDED NOTE: Wagner Sanz reconstructed Aristotle’s logic the way it would have been had Aristole focused on constructing “anti-sciences” instead of sciences: more generally, on systems of disbeliefs. (shrink)

The duality of truth and falsity in a Boolean algebra of propositions is used to generate a duality of belief and disbelief. To each additive probability measure that represents belief there corresponds a dual additive measure that represents disbelief. The dual measure has its own peculiar calculus, in which, for example, measures are added when propositions are combined under conjunction. A Venn diagram of the measure has the contradiction as its total space. While additive measures are (...) not self-dual, the epistemic state of complete ignorance is represented by the unique, monotonic, non-additive measure that is self-dual in its contingent propositions. Convex sets of additive measures fail to represent complete ignorance since they are not self-dual. (shrink)

Nuh Ha Mim Keller, a contemporary Muslim theologian, argues against the compatibility of evolution and Islam. In this article we intend to critically evaluate his position in which he advances three separate arguments. First, he criticizes the science of evolution. Second, he demonstrates the metaphysical problems with naturalism and the role of chance in the enterprise of evolution. Third, he contends that evolution and the creationist narrative in Islamic scripture is irresolvable. Given these points, Keller concludes that believing in human (...) evolution takes one outside the fold of Islam (kufr). After reviewing each of these points we argue that his claims are unwarranted because of other possibilities which Keller may have not considered. In effect, we argue that believing in evolution doesn't necessarily or definitively entail kufr. (shrink)

The feedback concealed information test (fCIT) is a new variant of the CIT that added feedback about participants’ concealing performances in the classical CIT. The advantage of the fCIT is that the resulting feedback related event-related potentials (ERPs) can be used to detect concealed information. However, the detection efficiency of feedback-based ERPs varies across studies. The present experiment examined whether the extent participants believed the feedback influenced their detection efficiency. Specifically, participants did a mock crime and were then tested in (...) a fCIT. Following the fCIT, participants were asked to report how much they believed the feedback was accurate. Results showed that there were no significant correlations between the amplitude of the feedback related negativity (FRN), feedback P300, and participants’ self-report at the group level. However, individual analyses showed that the detection efficiency of both the FRN and feedback P300 were influenced by participants’ belief about the presented feedback. The detection efficiency of the FRN and the feedback P300 was higher among participants who believed the feedback. These findings suggest that the fCIT is dependent to some extent on the participants’ level of belief in the feedback. (shrink)

The introduction of explicit notions of rejection, or disbelief, into logics for knowledge representation can be justified in a number of ways. Motivations range from the need for versions of negation weaker than classical negation, to the explicit recording of classic belief contraction operations in the area of belief change, and the additional levels of expressivity obtained from an extended version of belief change which includes disbelief contraction. In this paper we present four logics of (...) disbelief which address some or all of these intuitions. Soundness and completeness results are supplied and the logics are compared with respect to applicability and utility. (shrink)

This paper combines various structures representing degrees of belief, degrees of disbelief, and degrees of non-belief (degrees of expectations) into a unified whole. The representation uses relations of comparative necessity and possibility, as well as non-probabilistic functions assigning numerical values of necessity and possibility. We define all-encompassing necessity structures which have weak expectations (mere hypotheses, guesses, conjectures, etc.) occupying the lowest ranks and very strong, ineradicable ('a priori') beliefs occupying the highest ranks. Structurally, there are no differences (...) from the top to the bottom. I argue that belief is a vague notion, and that thresholds for belief, if there are any, are context-dependent. (shrink)

While epistemologists routinely employ disbelief talk, it is not clear that they really mean it, given that they often equate disbelieving p with believing ¬p. I argue that this is a mistake—disbelief is a doxastic attitude of rejection and is distinct from belief. I first clarify this claim and its opposition, then show that we must distinguish disbelieving p from believing ¬p in order to account for the fact that we continue to hold doxastic attitudes toward propositions (...) that we reject. After defending this argument against some possible objections, I examine several cases that reveal disbelieving p to be not only non-identical to believing ¬p, but independent of that attitude as well. Finally, I sketch some immediate and potential consequences of recognizing disbelief as a distinct doxastic attitude, particularly for work on epistemic rationality. (shrink)

Disbelief, lies, and manipulations have been objects of scholarly consideration from widely different perspectives: historical, sociological, philosophical, ethical, logical, and pragmatic. In this paper, these notions are re-examined in the framework of a Transactional Discourse Model which operates in terms of the location and relocation of various knowledge items within two sets of knowledge, A and B, representing two interlocators A and B, and two of their subsets Ca and Cb, which constitute the sets of the matters of A's (...) and B's current concern. This approach reveals certain formal features shared by lies, disbelief, and manipulations that indicate that these three types of discourse behavior constitute a deviation from successful interpersonal communication as defined in the proposed model. The model, moreover, enables us to explicitly capture both the similarities and the differences of lies and manipulations with other pragmatic phenomena, such as jokes, impersonating, role-acting, memory failure, politeness expressions, and tact; the comparison suggests that certain modifications of Gricean conversational maxims may be in order. (shrink)

_An intimate, philosophic quest for eternity, amidst the disenchantments and disappointments of our time “Anyone who, in our age of disbelief, longs to believe in God will find Mr. Kronman worth reading.”—Andrew Stark, _Wall Street Journal___ “Aims to persuade America’s ‘relentlessly rational’ elites to acknowledge the existence of ‘divinity.’... Kronman’s ambition is to repair ‘the schism between those for whom religion continues to matter and those who view it with amusement or contempt.’”—Tunku Varadarajan, _Wall Street Journal__ Many people of (...) faith believe the meaning of life depends on our connection to an eternal order of some kind. Atheists deride this belief as a childish superstition. In this wise and profound book, Anthony Kronman offers an alternative to these two entrenched positions, arguing that neither addresses the complexities of the human condition. We can never reach God, as religion promises, but cannot give up the longing to do so either. We are condemned by our nature to set goals we can neither abandon nor fulfill, yet paradoxically are able to approach more closely if we try. The human condition is one of inevitable disappointment tempered by moments of joy. Resolutely humanistic and theologically inspired, this moving book offers a rational path to the love of God amidst the disenchantments of our time. (shrink)

Is faith that p compatible with disbelief that p? I argue that it is. After surveying some recent literature on the compatibility of propositional and non-propositional forms of faith with the lack of belief, I take the next step and offer several arguments for the thesis that both these forms of faith are also compatible, in certain cases, with outright disbelief. This is contrary to the views of some significant recent commentators on propositional faith, including Robert Audi (...) and Daniel Howard-Snyder. The primary argument revolves around the possibility of maintaining a single faith through drastic changes in cognitive attitude. I argue that once we allow that propositional faith is compatible with weaker cognitive attitudes than belief, such as acceptance or assent, there is prima facie reason to consider propositional faith as sometimes compatible with disbelief. I then consider objections and offer some final reflections on the significance of the thesis. (shrink)

Psychologists have studied paranormal belief for over a century, but have been concerned with belief in the paranormal rather than disbelief. However, disbelief in the paranormal is a position in its own right and, for many, by no means a self-evident position. An avowal of disbelief is, therefore, a social phenomenon that may involve some interesting discursive work. This article examines the discourse of self-ascribed ‘sceptics’, and analyses how they warrant their expressed position when faced (...) with an ostensibly paranormal event for which they cannot provide a ‘normal’ explanation. We show how, for example, through the use of ‘definitely/something’ constructions, they appeal to an explanation that exists in principle, though the details are not available to them. Such devices can be seen as social and discursive forms of belief maintenance, in that they are designed to maintain a social position established through an avowal of belief. (shrink)

Traditionally epistemologists have taken doxastic states to come in three varieties—belief, disbelief, and suspension. Recently many epistemologists have taken our doxastic condition to be usefully represented by credences—quantified degrees of belief. Moreover, some have thought that this new credal picture is sufficient to account for everything we want to explain with the old traditional picture. Therefore, belief, disbelief, and suspension must map onto the new picture somehow. In this paper I challenge that possibility. Approaching the (...) question from the angle of suspension, I argue that all possible credal accounts face serious challenges. They either (i) falsify central claims that uphold the credal picture itself or (ii) do not permit suspension in cases where it is permissible or (iii) rule out the possibility of plainly possible confidence comparisons. (shrink)

. Several recent Roman Catholics who were known for their devotion have left accounts of their troubled faith. I consider three of these: St. Therese of Lisieux, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Then I tell of the troubled atheism of Jean‐Paul Sartre. Finally, I use texts of Sartre and Teilhard to understand the unsettled nature of belief.

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes.

According to the naive theory of belief reports, our intuition that “Lois believes that Kent flies” is false results from our mistakenly identifying what this sentence implicates, which is false, with what it says, which is true. Whatever the merits of this proposal, it is here argued that the naive theory’s analysis of negative belief reports—sentences such as “Lois doesn't believe that Kent flies”—gives rise to equally problematic clashes with intuition, but that in this case no “pragmatic” explanation (...) is available. In particular, it is argued that there are situations at which, although “Lois believes that Superman flies” and “Lois doesn't believe that Kent flies” appear consistent, a speaker must contradict himself when he utters both. It is also argued that the hidden-indexical theory of belief reports—which otherwise respects our ordinary intuitions regarding belief reports—similarly fails to explain this intuition. (shrink)

This volume examines modern scepticism in all main philosophical areas: epistemology, science, metaphysics, morals, and religion. It features sixteen essays that explore its importance for modern thought. The contributions present diverse, mutually enriching interpretations of key thinkers, from Montaigne to Nietzsche. The book includes a look both at the relationship between Montaigne and Pascal and at Montaigne’s criticism of religious rationalism. It turns its attention to an investigation into the links between ancient scepticism and Bacon’s Doctrine of the Idols, as (...) well as into the ancient problem of the criterion in Cartesian philosophy. Next, three essays focus on more general topics, like modern sceptical disturbances, clandestine literature and irreligion. Two essays investigate the role of scepticism in Bayle’s moral thinking and his theory of religious toleration. Hume’s sceptical philosophy is the subject of two papers by distinguished scholars. In addition, many contributors address the presence of scepticism in Kant and in the German Idealism, such as the role of Schulze's scepticism in the works of the young Hegel. The book closes with a paper on Nietzsche and scepticism, and an essay on the role of Popkin’s and Schmitt’s works on modern scepticism. This collection continues along a rich, fruitful path opened by Richard H. Popkin and pursued by many important scholars, like Gianni Paganini, John-Christian Laursen, and José Raimundo Maia Neto. It re-establishes that necessary dialogue between researchers of scepticism from all over the Americas, which began with Popkin, Oswaldo Porchat and Ezequiel de Olaso long ago. This insightful reflection on modern European scepticism will also serve as an important resource in the history of modern philosophy. (shrink)

The principal aim of Wetsel's study is to identify the potential interlocutor for whom Pascal intended his Pensées. Wetsel begins by stating his belief that, despite the fragmentary state of the Pensées, Pascal had clearly intended to revise and organize his thoughts into a "finished apology of the Christian religion". Those unfamiliar with the current state of Pascalian studies in North America will be surprised to learn how controversial is such a thesis. In this Derridian era, with its endless (...) fascination with discontinuity and fragmentation, a practically subatomic reading of the Pensées has become de rigueur. Wetsel's book is an unabashed return to the historicocritical tradition. Chapter 1 exposes the principal anti-Christian theses current in midseventeenth-century Paris, centering on the works of philosophes libertins such as La Mothe le Vayer and Gabriel Naud. More radical atheistic works, such as those of Cyrano de Bergerac, are also discussed at length. Wetsel attempts to demonstrate that Pascal is not addressing these libertins érudits, whose arguments against Christianity leave hardly any trace in the Pensées. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the "skeptical religion" popular in seventeenth-century France. Wetsel maintains that this deism with neo-Pelagian elements, essentially the religion of the honnête homme, is the disbelief of those whom Pascal wishes to convert. The following chapter deals with the most important of the unorthodox versions of the Genesis story advanced during the Classical period in France, the works of Isaac de la Peyrère. Wetsel does not propose that Pascal, though familiar with the Pre-Adamite theory of La Peyrère, intended a specific refutation of this author. Rather he believes that a general examination of seventeenth-century heterodoxy provides the fundamental historical context essential for understanding Pascal's defense of orthodoxy. (shrink)

On one view of the traditional doxastic attitudes, belief is credence 1, disbelief is credence 0 and suspension is any precise credence between 0 and 1. In ‘Rational agnosticism and degrees of belief’ (2013) Jane Friedman argues, against this view, that there are cases where a credence of 0 is required but where suspension is permitted. If this were so, belief, disbelief and suspension could not be identified or reduced to the aforementioned credences. I argue (...) that Friedman relies on two different notions of epistemic rationality and two different kinds of evidential absence. I clarify these distinctions and show that her argument is either not valid or includes implausible premisses, twice over. If this is so, the view that belief is credence 1, disbelief is credence 0 and suspension is any precise credence between 0 and 1 cannot be rejected on the grounds that Friedman proposes. (shrink)

I attempt to explain the lasting effectiveness and critical success of Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963) by roughly sketching the role that spectator belief might play in a revised version of the so-called “Thought Theory” of emotional response to fiction. I argue that The Haunting engages viewers in a process of “disbelief mitigation”—the sheltering of nontrivial, tenuously held beliefs required for optimal viewer response—that helps make the film work as horror, and prevents it from sliding into comedy. Haunted (...) house films do not have to extend much effort to keep us from walking away, since most viewers come to the theater ready to entertain the idea that haunted houses exist. Using the experiential philosophy of John Dewey, I propose that this willingness has to do with a fundamental aspect of our relationship with space. It is common to speak of places as “charged” or “tense,” to get feelings of dread or nostalgia from certain spots. Some haunted house films make use of this experiential characteristic to fuel the horror, and without it, the subgenre would probably not exist. (shrink)

It is often claimed that belief in God is based on faith, while non-belief is grounded in rationality. This claim is inaccurate. Moral philosopher Carlo Alvaro takes the reader through his philosophical journey—a journey taken with the absolute absence of faith. Through reasoning alone, and with an objective assessment of the classical theistic arguments, Deism takes the reader from disbelief to a particular version of deism. Deism discusses such arguments as the Kalam Cosmological, the asymmetry against the (...) evil-god challenge, the anthropic principle, and the moral. Such arguments lead to the undeniable conclusion that there exists a timeless, space-less, wholly good, and infinitely powerful being endowed with freedom of the will, who brought the universe into existence a finite time ago. An objective appraisal of such arguments leads to the conclusions that atheism is an irrational philosophical position, that God does not interact with humans, at least not during our physical existence on earth, and that God is the best explanation of the objectivity of moral value and duty. (shrink)

This paper considers the relationship between evidence and self-fulfilling beliefs—beliefs whose propositional contents will be true just in case—and because—an agent believes them. Following Grice, many philosophers hold that believing such propositions would involve an impermissible form of bootstrapping. This paper argues that such objections get their force from a popular but problematic function-model of theoretical deliberation, and that attending to the case of self-fulfilling belief can help us see why such a model is mistaken. The paper shows that (...) on a revised model of theoretical deliberation our evidence will problematically underdetermine any appropriate doxastic attitude: when belief in a proposition is self-fulfilling, our evidence is insufficient to support belief, disbelief, or even suspended judgment toward that proposition. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a conflict between two theses held by John McDowell, namely i) the claim that we are under a standing obligation to revise our beliefs if reflection demands it; and ii) the view that veridical experience is a mode of direct access to the world. Since puts no bounds on what would constitute reasonable doubt, it invites skeptical concerns which overthrow. Conversely, since says that there are some experiences which we are entitled to trust, it (...) undermines the prescriptive scope of. Drawing on C. S. Peirce's distinction between genuine and contrived doubt, I maintain that critical revisions of beliefs should be triggered only by unwanted disruptions of habits, thereby restoring unity between McDowell's two theses. (shrink)

The paper argues that our emotions in response to fictional representations are best explained, not as requiring a suspension of disbelief, but as resembling the emotions we feel when we propound a hypothetical case to ourselves, such as the imagined happiness or suffering of ourselves or another. In reading fiction we voluntarily participate in a hypothesis represented by the work. If this explanation is accepted, we can retain the view that beliefs always entail commitment to the reality of what (...) is believed. (shrink)

There is no consensus among scholars of myth as to how the central concept of their field should be defined. What is a ‘myth’ and how does it differ from a ‘belief’? Moreover, scholars have argued for a homological relationship between myth and ritual. Semantically, the word ‘myth’ has a connotation of disbelief in ‘superstition’, and the word ‘belief’ should be substituted when talking about religious practices. Likewise, the word ‘ritual’ may be substituted with ‘ceremonial’, which has (...) connotations that are more positive. Earlier publications that associate ancestral veneration with the words ‘myth’ or ‘superstition’ display a judgemental view of the beliefs of other cultures. In this article, the author attempts, via recourse to the use of the word ‘myth’, to describe and interpret traditional and cultural belief systems among the Bapedi people of Limpopo Province in South Africa. It is argued that myth should not be reduced to ritual nor ritual to myth. Belief and ritual, in Bapedi religion and belief systems, complete and complement each other, thus allowing the harmonious unison of meta and paralinguistic elements in religiocultural discourse. The focus of this study is to explore and document these links within the context of the Bapedi culture. (shrink)

Traditional accounts of belief change have been criticized for placing undue emphasis on the new belief provided as input. A recent proposal to address such issues is a framework for non-prioritized belief change based on default theories (Ghose and Goebel, 1998). A novel feature of this approach is the introduction of disbeliefs alongside beliefs which allows for a view of belief contraction as independently useful, instead of just being seen as an intermediate step in the process (...) of belief revision. This approach is, however, restrictive in assuming a linear ordering of reliability on the received inputs. In this paper, we replace the linear ordering with a preference ranking on inputs from which a total preorder on inputs can be induced. This extension brings along with it the problem of dealing with inputs of equal rank. We provide a semantic solution to this problem which contains, as a special case, AGM belief change on closed theories. (shrink)

Doxasticism is the view that propositional faith entails belief. A common criticism of doxasticism is that faith seems compatible with doubt in a way that belief is not. Thus, it seems possible to have faith without belief, and several non-doxasticist accounts of faith are motivated inter alia by the need to account for this type of doubt. I provide three avenues of response: (1) favored cases of faith without belief beg the question by stipulating faith-that-p-without-belief-that-p, (...) or if the non-doxasticist provides evidence that there is faith without belief, this evidence points to either (2) no-faith-that-p-because-disbelief-that-p or (3) faith-that-p-with-belief-that-p. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that a certain kind of belief is necessary for religious experience. Yet it is not clear that this must be so. In this article, I defend the possibility that a subject could have a genuine emotional religious experience without thereby necessarily believing that the purported object of her experience corresponds to reality and/or is the cause of her experience. Imaginative engagement, I argue, may evoke emotional religious experiences that may be said to be both genuine (...) and appropriate, despite not necessarily including beliefs of the aforementioned kind.I go on to maintain that such religious engagement is compatible not only with non-belief but also with disbelief. (shrink)

Pragmatists have argued that doxastic or epistemic norms do not apply to beliefs, but to changes of beliefs; thus not to the holding or not-holding, but to the acquisition or removal of beliefs. Doxastic voluntarism generally claims that humans acquire beliefs in a deliberate and controlled way. This paper introduces Negative Doxastic Voluntarism according to which there is a fundamental asymmetry in belief change: humans tend to acquire beliefs more or less automatically and unreflectively, but they tend to withdraw (...) beliefs in a controlled and deliberate way. I first present a variety of philosophical, empirical and logical arguments for Negative Doxastic Voluntarism. Then I raise two objections against it. First, the apparent asymmetry may result from a confusion of belief with other doxastic attitudes like assumption, supposition, hypothesis or opinion. Second, the apparent asymmetry seems to vanish if we focus on doxastic states rather than just beliefs. Some rejoinders and their consequences for the vague concept of belief are sketched. (shrink)

Four studies measured or manipulated beliefs in free will to illuminate how such beliefs are linked to other aspects of personality. Study 1 showed that stronger belief in free will was correlated with more gratitude, greater life satisfaction, lower levels of perceived life stress, a greater sense of self-efficacy, greater perceived meaning in life, higher commitment in relationships, and more willingness to forgive relationship partners. Study 2 showed that the belief in free will was a stronger predictor of (...) life satisfaction, meaning in life, gratitude, and self-efficacy than either locus of control or implicit person theory. Study 3 showed that experimentally manipulating disbelief in free will caused a reduction in the perceived meaningfulness of life. Study 4 found that inducing a stronger belief in free will caused people to set more meaningful goals for themselves. The possible concern that believers in free will simply claim all manner of positive traits was contradicted by predicted null finding.. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an account of the wrong that is done to women when everyday people fail to believe allegations of sexual assault made by women. I argue that an everyday person wrongs both the accuser and women causally distant from the accuser when they fail to believe the accuser’s allegation. First, I argue that there are responses that we, as everyday members of society, owe to victims of sexual assault. A condition enabling everyday people to respond in (...) the way owed to victims is that they have an outright belief that the accuser was assaulted. Actively suspending judgement about whether a crime occurred is in tension with the ability to respond to the victim in a way that supports and validates them. When an everyday person fails to have an outright belief in the truth of an allegation, they wrong the accuser because they risk failing to satisfy the conditions enabling them to fulfill their obligation to her. Second, I argue that everyday people wrong women who are causally distant from the accuser because in our social context, women are often treated in particular ways – especially in the sexual domain – because they are women. As a result, when women hear that an everyday person fails to believe a particular allegation, they easily project themselves into the accuser’s position and reasonably worry that if they were to be assaulted, they too would be met with doubt and disbelief by the people in their community. (shrink)

This chapter summarizes research on free will. Progress has been made by discarding outmoded philosophical notions in favor of exploring how ordinary people understand and use the notion of free will. The concept of responsible autonomy captures many aspects of layperson concepts of free will, including acting on one's own (i.e., not driven by external forces), choosing, using reasons and personal values, conscious reflection, and knowing and accepting consequences and moral implications. Free will can thus be understood as form of (...) volition (action control) that evolved to enable people to live in cultural societies. Much work has shown that belief in free will (as opposed to disbelief) is associated with actions that are conducive to functioning well in culture, including helpfulness, restraint of aggression, learning via counterfactual analysis, thinking for oneself, effective job performance, and appropriate gratitude. Belief in free will increases in response to misdeeds by others, thus emphasizing the link to personal responsibility. Research on volition indicates that self-regulation, intelligent reasoning, decision making, and initiative all deplete a (common) limited energy source, akin to the folk notion of willpower and linked to the body's glucose supplies. Free will is thus not an absolute or constant property of persons but a variable, fluctuating capability—one that is nonetheless highly adaptive for individuals and society. -/- The notion that people have free will has been invoked in multiple contexts. Legally and morally, it explains why people can be held responsible for their actions. Theologically, it was used to explain why a supposedly kind and omniscient god would send most of the people he created to hell (Walker, 1964). Yet, for such an important concept, there remains wide-ranging disagreement and confusion over its existence and its nature. For example, philosophers still debate whether humans truly have free will and, if so, under what conditions human volition deserves to be considered free (Kane, 2011). In psychology, most theorists believe that humans engage in self-control, rational choice, planning, initiative, and related acts of volition. The debate is not whether these things occur but merely whether these should be called free will. -/- This chapter will provide an overview of recent psychology experiments concerned with free will. There are three main and quite distinct sets of problems, each with associated lines of research. The first is concerned with how people understand the idea of free will. The second concerns the causes and consequences of believing in free will. The third focuses on the actual volitional processes that guide human action. (shrink)

Does faith require belief? “Belief-plus” accounts of faith say yes. “Non-doxastic” accounts say no but tend to place a “no-disbelief constraint” on faith. Both sides, I argue, are mistaken for making belief explanatorily prior to faith. Indeed, both “faith” and “belief” have contextualist semantics, which leaves only a tenuous tie between the applications of the two words.

Background: While religious faith remains one of the most significant features of human life, little is known about its relationship to ordinary belief at the level of the brain. Nor is it known whether religious believers and nonbelievers differ in how they evaluate statements of fact. Our lab previously has used functional neuroimaging to study belief as a general mode of cognition, and others have looked specifically at religious belief. However, no research has compared these two states (...) of mind directly. Methodology/Principal Findings: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure signal changes in the brains of thirty subjects - fifteen committed Christians and fifteen nonbelievers - as they evaluated the truth and falsity of religious and nonreligious propositions. For both groups, and in both categories of stimuli, belief was associated with greater signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area important for self-representation, emotional associations, reward, and goal-driven behavior. This region showed greater signal whether subjects believed statements about God, the Virgin Birth, etc. or statements about ordinary facts. A comparison of both stimulus categories suggests that religious thinking is more associated with brain regions that govern emotion, self-representation, and cognitive conflict, while thinking about ordinary facts is more reliant upon memory retrieval networks. Conclusions/Significance: While religious and nonreligious thinking differentially engage broad regions of the frontal, parietal, and medial temporal lobes, the difference between belief and disbelief appears to be content-independent. Our study compares religious thinking with ordinary cognition and, as such, constitutes a step toward developing a neuropsychology of religion. However, these findings may also further our understanding of how the brain accepts statements of all kinds to be valid descriptions of the world. © 2009 Harris et al. (shrink)

Excerpt from A Defence of Philosophic Doubt: Being an Essay on the Foundations of Belief What is meant by Ethics I have Shown at length in the Appendix which will be found at the end of the volume. Here it is only necessary to say that it includes, not only what are commonly called moral systems, but also some analogous systems not usually so described. Multitudes of propositions, all professing to em body knowledge belonging to one or other of (...) these departments, are being continually put forward for our acceptance. And as no one believes all of them, so those who profess to act rationally must hold that there are grounds for rejecting the propositions they disbelieve, and for accepting those they believe. The systematic account of. These grounds of belief and disbelief makes up the fourth of the Classes into which possible knowledge is divided, and is here always called Philosophy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This paper explicates and defends some of William James' more controversial claims in ‘The Will to Believe’. After showing some of the weaknesses in standard interpretations of James' position, I turn to James' Principles of Psychology and The Varieties of Religious Experience to spell out in more detail James' account of the nature of the attitudes of belief, doubt, and disbelief and link them to an account of the subject. In so doing, the moral force of the argument (...) comes to the fore by casting the question ‘Can we believe at will?’ in a new light. Through a discussion of the conversion experiences of The Varieties of Religious Experience and the kinds of self-transformations in which beliefs that once appeared dead become live that appear throughout James' psychology, the moral urgency of James' position in ‘The Will to Believe’ is clarified. (shrink)

Recent summaries of psychologist James H. Leuba's pioneering studies on the religious beliefs of American scientists have misrepresented his findings and ignored important aspects of his analyses, including predictions regarding the future of religion. Much of the recent interest in Leuba was sparked by Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham's commentary in Nature , “Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith.” Larson and Witham compared the results of their 1996 survey of one thousand randomly selected American scientists regarding their religious beliefs (...) with a similar survey published eighty years earlier by Leuba. Leuba's original studies are themselves problematical. Nonetheless, his notion that different fields of science have different impacts on the religion‐science relationship remains valid. Especially significant is his appreciation of religion as a dynamic, compelling force in human life: any waning of traditional beliefs does not mean a decrease in religious commitment but calls for a new spirituality in harmony with modern scientific teachings. Leuba's studies, placed in proper context, offer a broad historical perspective from which to interpret data about religious beliefs of scientists and the impact of science and scientists on public beliefs, and opportunity to develop new insight into the religion‐science relationship. (shrink)

Hume’s remark that “the conviction of religionists, in all ages, is more affected than real” is considered in relation to various monotheistic beliefs against the background of his account of belief more generally. The issue arises as to what Hume means by characterizing the assent associated with religious belief as an operation between disbelief and conviction. According to Hume, the obscurity of the ideas involved in the religious convictions of the “vulgar” prevents them from achieving the force (...) and vivacity characteristic of belief. As for philosophers, their idea of God encounters the problem of evil and the question of whether it is possible for the deity to possess moral virtues. Even the ascription to God of natural attributes takes us beyond what may meaningfully be imagined. Finally, the philosophical idea of God as a principle of order provides a form of theistic belief that is only verbally different from atheism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Rejection of Belief in God versus Rejection of Christianity Jesus and Christianity Jesus: A Brief Examination Conclusion References.

In the debate volume, ’Knowledge of God’, co-authored with Alvin Plantinga, I argued that there is an inductively sound version of the argument from evil, and recently, several popular books criticizing religious belief have appeared, often focusing on that issue of the existence of God. In the present essay I argue, however, that to help ordinary people think more critically about religious beliefs, it is better to focus on beliefs associated with specific religions, such as Christianity. I then go (...) on to look briefly at Jesus, and I offer reasons for concluding that Jesus was neither wise nor morally admirable. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Epistemic Commitments of Naturalism The Unity of Scientific Explanations The Explanatory Poverty of the Supernatural The Demands of Objectivity Projecting God Nature is Enough Notes.