Belief's own ethics / Jonathan E. Adler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Adler, Jonathan Eric, 1948- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Belief and doubt.

Evidence.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 357 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [2002]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

The fundamental question of the ethics of belief is "What ought one to believe?" According to the traditional view of evidentialism, the strength of one's beliefs should be proportionate to the evidence. Conventional ways of defending and challenging evidentialism rely on the idea that what one ought to believe is a matter of what it is rational, prudent, ethical, or personally fulfilling to believe. Common to all these approaches is that they look outside of belief itself to determine what one ought to believe. In this book Jonathan Adler offers a strengthened version of evidentialism, arguing that the ethics of belief should be rooted in the concept of belief--that evidentialism is belief's own ethics. A key observation is that it is not merely that one ought not, but that one cannot, believe, for example, that the number of stars is even. The "cannot" represents a conceptual barrier, not just an inability. Therefore belief in defiance of one's evidence (or evidentialism) is impossible. Adler addresses such questions as irrational beliefs, reasonableness, control over beliefs, and whether justifying beliefs requires a foundation. Although he treats the ethics of belief as a central topic in epistemology, his ideas also bear on rationality, argument and pragmatics, philosophy of religion, ethics, and social cognitive psychology.

Notes:

"A Bradford book."

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

9780262266826

0262266822

0585436150

9780585436159

0262240440

9780262240444

0262511940

9780262511940

OCLC:

51958922

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.