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Every known religious or explicitly irreligious outlook is contested by large contingents of informed and reasonable people. Many philosophers have argued that reflection on this fact should lead us to abandon confident religious or irreligious belief and to embrace religious skepticism. John Pittard critically assesses the case for such disagreement-motivated religious skepticism. While the book focuses on religious disagreement, it makes a number of significant contributions to the more general discussion of the rational significance of disagreement as well.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Topic and Approach
- 2 Overview of Chapters and Reading Guide
- Part I: Against Impartiality
- Chapter 1: Disagreement-Motivated Religious Skepticism and the Commitment to Impartiality
- Chapter 2: De-Motivating Reasons Impartiality
- Chapter 3: From Impartiality to Instrumentalism
- Chapter 4: Partisan Justification and Religious Belief
- Chapter 5: Affective Rationalism and Religious Insight
- Part II: What Does Impartiality Require?
- Chapter 6: Elusive Impartiality
- Chapter 7: Unpalatable Conclusions and Deliberative Vertigo
- Conclusion
- References
About the author
John Pittard is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Yale Divinity School, with a secondary appointment in the Yale Department of Philosophy. He received his Ph.D. from Yale, his M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, and his A.B. from Harvard. He works in epistemology and the philosophy of religion.
Summary
The striking extent of religious disagreement suggests that religious conviction is very often the result of processes that do not reliably produce true beliefs. For this reason, many have argued that the only rational response to religious disagreement is to adopt a religious skepticism that eschews confident religious belief. Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment contests this skeptical conclusion, explaining how it could be rational to maintain confident belief even in the face of the epistemic worries posed by disagreement. John Pittard argues against the commitment to rigorous epistemic impartiality that underlies the case for disagreement-motivated religious skepticism, while also critiquing approaches to disagreement that allow for the unproblematic privileging of one's first-person perspective. He emphasizes the importance of having rational insight into reasons that favor one's outlook; however, he challenges narrowly intellectualist accounts of insight, arguing that many of the rational insights crucial to assessing religious outlooks are not achievable through analytical reasoning, but only through relevant emotional experiences.
In the second part of the book, Pittard considers the implications that accepting the impartiality requirement favored by "disagreement skeptics" has for religious commitment. He challenges the common assumption that a commitment to rigorous epistemic impartiality would rule out confident religious belief. He further argues, however, that such an impartiality commitment would likely make it irrational to pursue one's favored form of religious life and might prevent one from rationally engaging in any religious or irreligious way of life whatsoever. This troubling conclusion gives reason to hope that the arguments against impartiality are correct and that one can justify conviction despite widespread disagreement.
Additional text
“John Pittard has done a great service to the epistemology of disagreement literature with his recent book. Reading through this important contribution, one cannot help but get the impression that, even after all these years of a sprawling literature, significant and conversation-changing progress can still be made. We believe Pittard has made that sort of progress.” - Tomas Bogardus and Michael Burton, International Journal for the Study of Skepticism
