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ABSTRACT
Most literature on religious disagreements focuses on the epistemic problems related to doctrinal disputes. While, the main argument of my paper does not address such a topic, my purpose is to point at a practical exit strategy from the blind spot to which most disagreements lead. However, in order to argue for my views, I need to provide a substantive account of how religious beliefs work and which epistemic obligations they involve. Such account challenges most mainstream assumptions, and needs to be developed in some details. My method consists, then, in construing a theory for religious beliefs, and exploring its consequence concerning disagreements. I will focus particularly on the positive task. Indeed, if my account for religious beliefs works, consequences easily follow.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. A previous version of this paper was read at the conference Arguing Religion. Disagreement, Recognition, and the Reach of Argumentative Debate, Trento, 6–8 June, 2017. I would like to thank all participants for their useful comments and suggestions. I have also benefited from many detailed discussions of my views with Rachel Jonker while I was writing the paper. Her criticisms strongly improved my argument. Daniela Almansi revised the English form of the paper. Her help has been fundamental. Finally, my thanks to the anonymous referees of the International Journal of Philosophy and Theology for their useful and well directed suggestions.
2. Concilium Ephesenum 431, “The Definition of the Faith.”
3. Truschke, “Dangerous Debates.”
4. Garroute et al., “Religiosity and Spiritual Engagement.”
5. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §§ 243–71.
6. Wittgenstein 1971, 75: “Ein Kind hat sich verletzt, es schreit; und nun sprechen ihm die Erwachsenen zu und bringen ihm Ausrufe und später Sätze bei. Sie lehren das Kind ein neues Schmerzbenehemen.”
7. Jakobsen, “Typological Studies and Their Contribution”; and Marcellesi and Gardin, Introduction à la sociolinguistique.
8. Eco, Trattato di semiotica generale; and Lotman, La semiosfera.
9. Quine, “Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes.”
10. Swinburne 1979.
11. Alston, Perceiving God; and Plantinga, “Pluralism: A Defense of Religious.”
12. Ward, Religion and Revelation.
13. Bertini, “Una proposta per la caratterizzazione.”
14. Recent scholarship in early Christianity supports the view that the first centuries of Christianity were characterized by completely subjective opinions pited each against the other. The opposition of orthodoxy to heterodoxy does not provide any substantive criteria: it is a perspectival illusion due to the fact that pro-orthodox won the doctrinal, institutional and pastoral fights. Ehrman, Lost Christianities; Bertini, Divenire Dio; and Pesce, “Perché i concetti di eresia.”
15. I do not side with Wittgensteinian theorists here. I do not believe that ordinary beliefs are to be distinguished from cornerstone propositions because the former are believed and justified by the latter, and the latter are simply accepted without justification (Ward, Religion and Revelation; and Wright, “Warrant for Nothing”). I developed a detailed criticism of such a view in Bertini, Tradizioni religiose e diversità. As them, I hold that religious and ordinary beliefs differ. But the way I account for such a difference has nothing to do with the hierarchical order of a belief system.
16. Fodor, The Modularity of Mind.
17. I developed my criticism in details here: Bertini, “Esperienza religiosa e pratiche doxastiche.”
18. I add the present section as a reply to a set of objections which Rachel Jonker raised against my views.
19. My argument moves from the empiricist assumption that experience comes before language. Call this the primacy of experience. I certainly acknowledge that many interesting and argument sustained views reject the primacy of experience. Naturally, since what precedes what is a dividing line in philosophy (for example, between empiricism and rationalism), I cannot say in few words anything at this regards, and I limit myself to make my assumptions explicit.
20. Plantinga, “Pluralism: A Defense of Religious”; Gellman, “In Defence of a Contented Religious.”
21. Feldman, “Epistemological Puzzles about Disagreement.”
22. Plantinga, “Pluralism: A Defense of Religious.”
23. Gelmann, “In Defence of a Contented Religious.”
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Daniele Bertini
Daniele Bertini is adjunct professor of Philosophy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and Philosophy Leader of the Analytic Theology Cluster on Morality, Evolution and the notion of God (funded by the Templeton Foundation). He defends pluralism in metaphysics, direct realism in epistemology, moral heteronomy in meta-ethics, and religious pluralism in philosophy of religion. He works within an empiricist framework. His last book is Tradizioni religiose e diversità (2016).