Safety and Knowledge in God

In recent ‘secular’ Epistemology, much attention has been paid to formulating an ‘anti-luck’ or ‘safety’ condition; it is now widely held that such a condition is an essential part of any satisfactory post-Gettier reflection on the nature of knowledge. In this paper, I explain the safety condition a...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:  
Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Mawson, T. J. (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Publié: University of Innsbruck in cooperation with the John Hick Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham [2014]
Dans: European journal for philosophy of religion
Année: 2014, Volume: 6, Numéro: 2, Pages: 81-100
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Connaissance de Dieu / Epistemologische Überzeugung
Classifications IxTheo:AB Philosophie de la religion
NBC Dieu
Accès en ligne: Volltext (doi)
Volltext (teilw. kostenfrei)
Description
Résumé:In recent ‘secular’ Epistemology, much attention has been paid to formulating an ‘anti-luck’ or ‘safety’ condition; it is now widely held that such a condition is an essential part of any satisfactory post-Gettier reflection on the nature of knowledge. In this paper, I explain the safety condition as it has emerged and then explore some implications of and for it arising from considering the God issue. It looks at the outset as if safety might be ‘good news’ for a view characteristic of Reformed Epistemology, viz. the view that if Theism is true, many philosophically unsophisticated believers probably know that it’s true. A (tentatively-drawn) sub-conclusion of my paper though suggests that as safety does not by itself turn true belief into knowledge, the recent focus on it is not quite such good news for Reformed Epistemologists as they may have hoped: it’s not that safety provides a new route by which they can reach this sort of conclusion. But safety is still good news for their view at least in the sense that there is no reason arising from considering it to count these philosophically unsophisticated believers as not knowing that there’s a God. I conclude by reflecting that good news for Reformed Epistemology is perhaps bad news for the discipline of Philosophy of Religion more generally, as there’s a possible ‘reflection destroys knowledge’-implication to be drawn. Those who have been led to their religious beliefs in at least some philosophically unsophisticated ways seem to enjoy much safer religious beliefs than those who have been led to their religious beliefs by philosophical reflection, so the discipline as a whole will be adversely affected if safety is eventually accorded the role of a necessary condition for knowledge.
Contient:Enthalten in: European journal for philosophy of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.24204/ejpr.v6i2.179