Belief's Own Ethics

374 Pages·2002·0.81 MB·English

by  Jonathan E. Adler

Belief’s Own Ethics
This page intentionally left blank
Belief’s Own Ethics
Jonathan E. Adler
A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or informa-
tion storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Sabon by Achorn Graphic Services Inc., and was printed and
bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adler, Jonathan Eric.
Belief’s own ethics/Jonathan E. Adler.
p. cm.
“A Bradford book.”
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 0-262-01192-1 (alk. paper)
1. Belief and doubt. 2. Evidence. I. Title.
BD215 .A35 2002
121´.6—dc21
2001054666
Dedicated to Sheila, Emily, and Jeff
This page intentionally left blank
You cannot be believed, Meletus, even, I think, by yourself.
—Plato, Apology26e
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface xiii
Introduction 1
1 Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Approaches 1
2 The Instability of Moderate Evidentialism 3
3 Methodological Preliminaries: Abstraction, Assertion, Modesty,
and First-Person Methodology 5
4 Chapter Summaries 14
5 Your Questions and a Guide to Locating My Answers 20
1 Getting Off the Wrong Track 25
I The Intrinsic Ethics of Belief 26
1 From the Subjective Principle to Evidentialism 26
2 The Incoherence Test 29
3 Who Am I to Say What You Can Believe? 32
4 Adequate Reasons 36
5 Full and Partial Belief 40
II Extrinsic Ethics of Belief 43
6 Critique of Four Extrinsic Doctrines 43
7 Assertion and an Everyday Bridge between First- and Second-
Order Judgments 49
8 Summary: The Traditional and the Conceptual Approaches to
Evidentialism 51
2 Can One Will to Believe? 55
1 Voluntarism and Williams’s Argument 56
2 Nonvoluntarism Does Not Imply Nonresponsibility 64
3 The Possibility of Weakness of Will for Belief 67
4 More Extreme Cases 70