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In the series of posts I began on Sunday and which has continued through this morning, I have developed and defended my naturalistic approach to understanding value as a realist. James Gray, despite being a moral realist, has balked at much in my attempts to do this and it has become increasingly clear that the [...]
Archive for the ‘Epistemic Justification’ Category
Against Moral Intuitionism
January 27th, 2011 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Ethics, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Featured, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy 
Tags: Alasdair MacIntyre, Emotivism, Error Theory, G.E. Moore, Intuitions, Moral Anti-Realism, Moral Intuitionism, Moral Realism, Robert Audi, Values 
6 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Faith Which Exploits Infinitesimal Probabilities As Openings For Strong Affirmations
January 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Pete C. argues that because our comprehension is limited, it is hubris for us to rule out faith in things that alleged to go beyond it: I’m not sure where I fall in the spectrum of agnosticism (if i belong there at all) so I can’t really self identify. But I will offer an explanation [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Spinoza, Spinoza 2 Comments »TOP Q (7): When, If Ever, Are Intellectual Mistakes Morally Culpable?
January 7th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Can we morally blame people for failing to pursue the truth well enough or for employing irrational methods of belief formation? Is belief something not in our volitional control at all? Is it an entirely passive thing to “just believe” something? Or even if we have some volitional control over what we believe, does it [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Ethics, Faith, Faith, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Tags: Blameworthy Beliefs, Epistemic Duties, Ethics of Belief, Free Will, Praiseworthy Beliefs, Virtue Epistemology 3 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: The Evidence-Impervious Agnostic Theists
December 29th, 2010 Daniel Fincke A vast majority of believers, though probably not all, believed in God before they ever encountered any arguments for its existence. For obvious cultural and psychological reasons, the concept of God is intuitively understandable and believable for most children and by far most believers start believing in childhood. Even those who spend a short time as [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian 21 Comments »Agnostics Or Apistics?
October 27th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In the past, I have defended the idea that rather than classifying people simply as atheists, agnostics, and theists that we should separate the questions of the contents of beliefs (whether they are atheistic or theistic) from whether one’s atheism or theism is held as a matter of knowledge or not. If one’s theism is [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion Tags: Agnostic Atheism, Agnostic Theism, Agnosticism, Apistic Agnostic Atheism, Gnostic Atheism, Gnostic Theism, Pistic Agnostic Atheism 33 Comments »Disambiguating Belief
August 8th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Ophelia Benson counters a common and deeply misleading equivocation (one I counter often, but most specifically addressed here and here): Belief is about truth; it equates to”it is true that X”. It is thus cognitive rather than emotive. It seems odd to me to ask if it would be better to believe the things I [...]
Typical Mind Fallacy: The Limits Of Generalizing From One Example
July 8th, 2010 Daniel Fincke “Everyone generalizes from one example. At least, I do.” – Vlad Taltos (Issola, Steven Brust) My old professor, David Berman, liked to talk about what he called the “typical mind fallacy”, which he illustrated through the following example: There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether “imagination” was simply a turn of phrase [...]
Posted in Daniel Dennett, Daniel Dennett, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Historical Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind Tags: Behaviorists, Berkeley, David Berman, Generalization, Gilbert Ryle, Less Wrong, Typical Mind Fallacy No Comments »Do New Atheists Unjustifiably Shirk Their Burden For Evidence?
July 7th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Michael Antony has an interesting but problematic article in Philosophy Now exploring whether “New Atheism” holds itself to a double standard when it comes to rules of evidence. He argues that New Atheists dismiss religious belief explicitly on “evidentialist” epistemic criteria whereby we must always proportion our belief to evidence, but at the same time, [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Religion, Religion, Secularism 9 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Implicit Faith
July 5th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In last night’s installment of the “Disambiguating Faith” series, I talked about the difference between, on the one hand, volitionally choosing to believe something that is either not rationally warranted or which is positively refuted by the available evidence, and, on the other hand, simply thinking one has rational warrant for one’s belief and yet [...]
Posted in Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Philosophy, Religion, Religion Tags: Cognitive Dissonance, Implicit Faith No Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Defending My Definition Of Faith As “Belief Or Trust Beyond Rational Warrant”
July 5th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Last week I responded to David Crowther’s argument that we should equally consider all beliefs that are not 100% certain to be “faith beliefs”. I argued that the word “belief” already covers the fact that we are fallible human beings and as such even our most nearly 100% certain propositions about the world are always [...]
Posted in Authority, Authority, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion Tags: Faith As Loyalty, Faith as Trust, Loyalty, Trust, Trustworthiness, Volition, Volitional Disposition, Volitional Faith 9 Comments »The Cosmological Argument, The Composition Fallacy, And More Reasons Not To Believe In God
July 3rd, 2010 Daniel Fincke Shane Wilkins, a graduate student in philosophy at Fordham (where we were fellow students and colleagues until just recently), has been an invaluable regular commentator at Camels With Hammers. He has served as my primary theistic foil since the beginning, when our 7-part debate (which started with my post Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellecuals 1) propelled this [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Christianity, Christianity, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Featured, Historical Philosophy, Jesus, Jesus, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Religion, Spinoza, Spinoza, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Composition Fallacy, Compositional Wholes No Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Not All Beliefs Held Without Certainty Are Faith Beliefs
June 30th, 2010 Daniel Fincke David Crowther raises a crucial point of contention: What I really want to do, is get back to the question of whether atheism is necessarily a “faith position”. If we generalize the term “faith” to mean believing or relying on something without absolute proof, than I think it is true to say that every possible [...]
Posted in Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Featured, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Language, Religion and Science, Science, Science, Skepticism, Skepticism Tags: Beliefs, Certainty, Skepticism 18 Comments »Beyond Agnosticism: More Details About How I Know Various Kinds Of Gods Do Not Exist, Based On Scientific And Philosophical Reasons
June 30th, 2010 Daniel Fincke While I agree with, and vigorously defend, the notion that there is an important difference between lacking a belief in gods (as an agnostic atheist) and believing there are no gods (as a gnostic atheist), I also think that atheists should not, based on the best available scientific evidence and philosophical arguments, merely lack belief [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Christianity, Christianity, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, God, God, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Religion, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Skepticism, Skepticism, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Agnosticism, Personal God 9 Comments »No, I’m Not An Atheist By Faith, Here Are My Arguments.
June 29th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Yesterday Ron Rosenbaum aggressively attacked atheism and defended agnosticism in Slate. He starts out with the familiar charge that atheists have “faith”. But faith in what? Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Cosmology, Cosmology, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Physics, Physics, Religion, Religion 45 Comments »
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