James E. Taylor

EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM.

The main thesis of this paper is that it is not possible to determine the nature of epistemic justification apart from scientific psychological investigation. I call this view “the strong thesis of methodological psychologism.” Two sub-theses provide the primary support for this claim. The first sub-thesis is that no account of epistemic justification is correct which requires for the possession of at least one justified belief a psychological capacity which humans do not have. That is, the correct account of epistemic justification must be psychologically realistic. The second sub-thesis is that it is not possible to determine whether an account of epistemic justification is psychologically realistic apart from scientific psychological investigation. After defending these subtheses, I point out some interesting consequences of the overall thesis which present a challenge to traditional epistemology.

The New Atheism and Models of God: The Case of Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is the only New Atheist who provides an explicit model of God. According to his “God Hypothesis,” which he argues is “very nearly false,” “there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.” But his argument is inadequate against traditional monotheism, since the monotheist model the God Hypothesis entails omits important elements of classical monotheist models of God. In particular, Dawkins’ assumption that God would have to be complex in such a way as to need to have been designed is questionable from the standpoint of perfect being theology. Moreover, his argument does not even exclude an imperfect monotheist god, since each of its premises is doubtful. Furthermore, even if his argument succeeded against these two varieties of monotheism, it would fail to rule out divine realities described by non-monotheist models of God such as pantheism and panentheism.

Introduction to Conceptual Foundations

As the title of this book makes clear, the essays contained in it are unified by their focus on models of God and alternative ultimate realities. But what is ultimate reality, what does ‘God’ mean, and what would count as a model of ultimate reality or God? These are just the sorts of questions that ought to be addressed in the first section of a volume like this. They are questions the answers to which are presupposed by the majority of articles in the ensuing sections. They are foundational questions about the core concepts employed in the anthology as a whole. The first two essays in this section focus on these sorts of questions. These two discussions also concentrate on other basic questions that belong at the beginning of this sort of inquiry: What purposes are models of God or ultimate reality intended to serve? Is it possible for us to achieve the goals we have for them? If so, how, and if not, why not? If these models cannot do everything we might want them to do, can they have some more limited uses for us nonetheless? And whether they can be maximally or only minimally beneficial relative to our designs for them, how are we to use them and how can we tell whether our employment of them has been successful?