“…There's the rub … apparently not, if we are among those who adhere to the skeptical theist's defensive maneuver for undercutting arguments from evil to atheism. It would seem that consistency would require us to claim ignorance here as before, and for more or less the same reasons, too. Consequently, our claim to knowledge seems to be threatened: We cannot without reservation trust such divine pronouncements…And once we have lost this particular kind of trust in the testimony, it cannot be the source of testimonial knowledge ( : 154).The only way to retain (or attain) knowledge of K in the light of the above considerations, says Hudson, is if we have positive reasons for trusting God's testimony in respect to K. That is, Hudson endorses the ‘reductionist' view of testimonial knowledge. The reductionist holds that for S to know p on the basis of R's testimony, S must have positive reasons for trusting R in respect to her testimony that p. (The nonreductionist denies this…”
Section: Skeptical Objections To Skeptical Theismmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…I am not well‐positioned to get good evidence from perception, memory, induction, and the like relevant to a judgment of reliability on this … And I am a hopeless judge of what is at stake—cosmically speaking—if I and my fellows are not deceived in some comprehensive, irresistible, and undetectable fashion. Indeed, I am quite utterly in the dark on that matter … ( : 161).Hence, because of skeptical theism, we are not capable of meeting the reductionist conditions for knowledge in respect to divine testimony and therefore our beliefs based on such testimony do not amount to knowledge. Hudson's argument appears to take the following form: (10) For any belief that we have based solely on God's testimony, if that belief amounts to knowledge, then we have positive reasons for trusting God with respect to that instance of testimony.(11) We do not have positive reasons for trusting God in respect to any instance of testimony.(12) Therefore, no belief we have based solely on God's testimony amounts to knowledge.Premise (10) follows from Hudson's reductionist position about testimonial knowledge, and Premise (11) is entailed by the following claims that Hudson assents to in the passages quoted above: (1) God can deceive us if there is a morally justifying reason for doing so, (2) skeptical theism prevents us from being assured that there are no such morally justifying reasons, and (3) God and humans are so different that we (humans) cannot rely on induction, perception, and the like for producing positive reasons for trusting God in respect to any instance of testimony.…”
Section: Skeptical Objections To Skeptical Theismmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Consequently, our claim to knowledge seems to be threatened: We cannot without reservation trust such divine pronouncements…And once we have lost this particular kind of trust in the testimony, it cannot be the source of testimonial knowledge ( : 154).…”
Section: Skeptical Objections To Skeptical Theismmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…2 For different statements of the evidential argument from evil see, for example, William Rowe (1979), Paul Draper (1989), and Michael Tooley's contribution to Tooley and Plantinga (2008 (2012: 11). 8 This analogy is owed to Hudson (2011) and(2014a). For a more complete defense of this normative premise, see Bergmann (2001Bergmann ( ), (2009Bergmann ( ), and (2012 and Hudson (2006), (2014a), (2014b), and (2017).…”
Arguments from evil purport to show that some fact about evil makes it (at least) probable that God does not exist. Skeptical theism is held to undermine many versions of the argument from evil: it is thought to undermine a crucial inference that such arguments often rely on. Skeptical objections to skeptical theism claim that it (skeptical theism) entails an excessive amount of skepticism and therefore should be rejected. In this article, I show that skeptical objections to skeptical theism have a very limited scope: only those who reject certain (apparently) popular epistemological theories will be threatened by them.
“…There's the rub … apparently not, if we are among those who adhere to the skeptical theist's defensive maneuver for undercutting arguments from evil to atheism. It would seem that consistency would require us to claim ignorance here as before, and for more or less the same reasons, too. Consequently, our claim to knowledge seems to be threatened: We cannot without reservation trust such divine pronouncements…And once we have lost this particular kind of trust in the testimony, it cannot be the source of testimonial knowledge ( : 154).The only way to retain (or attain) knowledge of K in the light of the above considerations, says Hudson, is if we have positive reasons for trusting God's testimony in respect to K. That is, Hudson endorses the ‘reductionist' view of testimonial knowledge. The reductionist holds that for S to know p on the basis of R's testimony, S must have positive reasons for trusting R in respect to her testimony that p. (The nonreductionist denies this…”
Section: Skeptical Objections To Skeptical Theismmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…I am not well‐positioned to get good evidence from perception, memory, induction, and the like relevant to a judgment of reliability on this … And I am a hopeless judge of what is at stake—cosmically speaking—if I and my fellows are not deceived in some comprehensive, irresistible, and undetectable fashion. Indeed, I am quite utterly in the dark on that matter … ( : 161).Hence, because of skeptical theism, we are not capable of meeting the reductionist conditions for knowledge in respect to divine testimony and therefore our beliefs based on such testimony do not amount to knowledge. Hudson's argument appears to take the following form: (10) For any belief that we have based solely on God's testimony, if that belief amounts to knowledge, then we have positive reasons for trusting God with respect to that instance of testimony.(11) We do not have positive reasons for trusting God in respect to any instance of testimony.(12) Therefore, no belief we have based solely on God's testimony amounts to knowledge.Premise (10) follows from Hudson's reductionist position about testimonial knowledge, and Premise (11) is entailed by the following claims that Hudson assents to in the passages quoted above: (1) God can deceive us if there is a morally justifying reason for doing so, (2) skeptical theism prevents us from being assured that there are no such morally justifying reasons, and (3) God and humans are so different that we (humans) cannot rely on induction, perception, and the like for producing positive reasons for trusting God in respect to any instance of testimony.…”
Section: Skeptical Objections To Skeptical Theismmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Consequently, our claim to knowledge seems to be threatened: We cannot without reservation trust such divine pronouncements…And once we have lost this particular kind of trust in the testimony, it cannot be the source of testimonial knowledge ( : 154).…”
Section: Skeptical Objections To Skeptical Theismmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…2 For different statements of the evidential argument from evil see, for example, William Rowe (1979), Paul Draper (1989), and Michael Tooley's contribution to Tooley and Plantinga (2008 (2012: 11). 8 This analogy is owed to Hudson (2011) and(2014a). For a more complete defense of this normative premise, see Bergmann (2001Bergmann ( ), (2009Bergmann ( ), and (2012 and Hudson (2006), (2014a), (2014b), and (2017).…”
Arguments from evil purport to show that some fact about evil makes it (at least) probable that God does not exist. Skeptical theism is held to undermine many versions of the argument from evil: it is thought to undermine a crucial inference that such arguments often rely on. Skeptical objections to skeptical theism claim that it (skeptical theism) entails an excessive amount of skepticism and therefore should be rejected. In this article, I show that skeptical objections to skeptical theism have a very limited scope: only those who reject certain (apparently) popular epistemological theories will be threatened by them.
“…Taking for granted that the operative notion of evidential support is probabilistic (and that the normative status of 'reasonable belief' supervenes on the strength of one's evidence), the picture is something like the following. First, after 3 See, for example, Rowe [1991Rowe [ , 1996Rowe [ , 2006, Dougherty [2012], and Hudson [2014]. 4 See, for example, Draper [1989], Dougherty [2008], and Tooley [2012.…”
Section: The Inductive Justification and Sceptical Theismmentioning
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