Interested in epistemology? It's probably one of the more interesting aspects of philosophy for most people. (Few find themselves enraptured by metaphysics and ontology like I do) There's a great online Epistemology Research Page with lots of good resources, including introductions to the subject. It also includes quite a few excellent online papers by significant figures of the past decade or two. One of the better ones relevant to theistic epistemology is Alston's "The Experiential Basis of Theism".
I was first turned onto Alston by Dennis Potter a few years back as an alternative to the approaches of Plantinga. I'd mentioned him a few weeks back while briefly mentioning Reliabilism. I admit that I find the extent Plantinga and Alston push reliabilism problematic. But he makes quite a few good points and offers some important notions relative to considering the epistemology of personal revelation.
An other good discussion of reliabilism is Kent Bach's "A Rationale for Reliabilism". He makes the point that many reliabilists make (and which I've made several times) - any internalist account of knowledge will end up discounting as knowledge many beliefs we commonsensically consider knowledge.
One common one is memory. I use my memory thousands of times a day. What is amazing isn't that it is occasionally wrong, but how often it is right. Yet under many epistemological conceptions of justification, it is hard to justify my beliefs that become present to me due to my act of recalling. Clearly it is not that hard to move from remembering to having beliefs revealed to me from God. And, in a way, the processes are very similar. Thus the appeal of reliabilism to theistic philosophers.
Update: Michael Sudduth has his course syllabus on Religious Epistemology available online. It has excellent brief summaries of many of the major issues in religious epistemology and is a must read for those interested in the topic. While some issues are different for Mormons, I think most apply.
Cool links, thanks Clark. Couldn't get past this in the theism article though:
Theism is the view that there is a single, ultimate and supremely perfect source of being, on which all other than itself depends at every moment for its existence, and which appears to us as personal.
Contra King Benjamin, I wonder if I should consider myself (or Mormons in general) theists in this sense.
Allen, I moved your comments here since that's what you intended to reply to.
I agree that the definition of theism is somewhat problematic since it ties Being and God very closely, the very error that I perceive as the main error of the apostasy. However I recognize that within the Judaic, Islamic and Christian traditions, we're definitely in the minority. In a sense most of the differences between us and our other Christian brothers and sisters comes down to that question of Being. I suppose that is partially why I find postmodernism so interesting. They question Being. I admit that I find the focus on God's ousia over his persons problematic. I think that Mormonism requires there to be something stronger in the unity than mere agreement. (Although certainly social trinitarianism ala Plantinga is popular among Mormons) Orson Pratt ended up inventing a Spirit/aether which took the place of the ousia of the trinity. But he was rather taken to task over that. But even Pratt kept a distinction between Being and this "ousia/aether." (Well, Pratt didn't really even consider questions of being beyond to be is to be extended, as I think Moreland points out quite astutely)
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
and Theology
Number of unique visitors:
Blogged by Clark Goble