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Religious Credence ≠ Factual Belief| old_uid | 10030 |
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| title | Religious Credence ≠ Factual Belief |
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| start_date | 2011/05/27 |
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| schedule | 11h-13h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | Abstract: I argue that psychology and epistemology should classify religious credence and factual belief as distinct cognitive attitudes, despite the fact that common parlance uses the same word (“belief”) for both of them. This is a thesis about attitudes, not contents. Just as fictional imagining and assumption for the sake of argument are different cognitive attitudes from factual belief, so too is religious credence. I argue for this thesis by identifying properties of factual belief that are needed to characterize factual belief and distinguish it from other attitudes. Then I note that religious credence generally lacks these properties.
Furthermore, religious credence has characteristic properties of its own that
factual belief generally lacks. To summarize: factual belief (1) is practical setting
independent, (2) has cognitive governance over other attitudes, and (3) is evidentially vulnerable; by way of contrast, religious credence (a) has perceived moral orientation, (b) is susceptible to free elaboration, and (c) is vulnerable to moral authority. Toward the end of the paper, I propose the normative epistemic
principles of Balance and Immunity to enable us better to judge which cognitive attitudes are or are not characteristic of well-functioning cognitive systems. |
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| responsibles | Spector, Lesguillons, Tiziana + |
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