One of the hot topics in doxastic epistemology at the moment is how to characterise the relationship between beliefs and truth. The extant literature is dominated by two views; a teleological understanding of the relationship – championed by people such as Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen – and a normative understanding of the relationship – championed by among others Nishi Shah. I argue that neither view does an adequate job of capturing the relationship between beliefs and truth. I argue that these two views should be abandoned in favour of a third model that sees beliefs as part of a doxastic system that aims at rationality.

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The starting point of the thesis is an acceptance of the principles of a moderately naturalized epistemology which allow for the traditional questions of epistemology, especially that of empirical justification, to be addressed in a recognizable way. It is argued that naturalism construed in this way is not compatible with scepticism regarding empirical knowledge, at least as far as the justification condition goes. Five general consequences of a moderately naturalistic position are deduced. It is shown how these general conclusions lead to a modest foundationalism, that is, they imply the corrigibility of all empirical beliefs and the basic status of some. The sensory character of basic beliefs is argued for, as is the claim that basic beliefs are not about the character of experience but about physical facts in the subject's immediate environment. The way in which an empirical belief is brought about (its 'dependence relations') is then examined. The important conclusion, for a theory of justification, to be drawn from this examination, is that sensory beliefs depend on no other beliefs but themselves for their empirical justification. This points to the fact that, if they are justified for their subjects, they must be self-evident and prima facie justified. Before explicating the nature of prima facie justification, the general requirements for a satisfactory theory of epistemic justification are set out. Such a theory must account for the reasonableness of the agent in believing as she does; it must accommodate deontological aspects and explain how justified belief is distinguishable from unjustified belief; and it must provide some objective link between the justified belief and its likely truth. It is shown that the theory of prima facie justification of sensory beliefs which emerges from a naturalized epistemology, satisfies these requirements, and that a conception of prima facie justification which ignores naturalistic constraints cannot explain immediate justification. / Philosophy & Systematic Theology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Philosophy)

Huen, Mei Yiu Jenny. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-90). / Abstracts in English and Chinese; appendix also in Chinese. / Chapter Chapter 1: --- Introduction --- p.9 / Philosophical Origin of Human Finitude in the Literature of Philosophy / The Concept of Human Finitude in Various Fields of Psychology / The Construct of Beliefs in Human Finitude / Beliefs in Human Finitude as a Lay Theory Approach / Using Lay Beliefs of Human Finitude to Predict Behavioral Tendencies / Relationship between Beliefs in Human Finitude and Other Scales / Aims and Overview of the Studies / Chapter Chapter 2: --- Methodology / Study 1 - Development of the Scale --- p.26 / Participants / Procedures / Content Analysis / Pilot Test 1 / Pilot Test 2 / Study 2a - Qualitative Validation of the BHF --- p.40 / Participants and Procedures / Results and Discussion / Study 2b - Quantitative Validation of the BHF --- p.43 / Participants / Procedures / Results and Discussion / Study 3 - Nomological Network of the BHF --- p.50 / Participants and Procedures / Measures / Results and Discussion / Chapter Chapter 3: --- Discussion --- p.77 / General Discussion / Theoretical Significance / Limitations / Future Directions / Human Existence with Human Limitations: Some Concluding Remarks / References --- p.86 / Appendices / Appendix 1: The Extract Presented in Study 1 --- p.91 / Appendix 2a: Raw Set of 205 items in Chinese --- p.92 / Appendix 2b: Raw Set of 205 items in English (translated) --- p.98 / Appendix 3: Percentage of raters who rated each of the 205 items on the 3 essential levels --- p.106 / Appendix 4: Percentage of raters who categorized each of the 205 items into the 3 hypothesized categories or an otherwise specified category --- p.113 / Appendix 5a: Reduced Set of 184 items in Chinese --- p.120 / Appendix 5b: Reduced Set of 184 items in English --- p.126 / Appendix 6: Level of agreement to the 184 items in the reduced set --- p.133 / Appendix 7: Percentage of respondents who categorized each of the 184 items into the 7 hypothesized categories or an otherwise specified category --- p.143 / Appendix 8a: The final version of the BHF scale in four domains (Chinese version) --- p.153 / Appendix 8b: The final version of the BHF scale in four domains (English version) --- p.155 / Appendix 9: Content validity ratio (CVR) of each of the 60 items in the scale --- p.157 / Appendix 10: Percentage of raters who categorized each of the items of the BHF into the 5 hypothesized domains or an otherwise specified domain --- p.159 / Appendix 11: Factor analysis of the BHF --- p.163 / Appendix 12: The original items of essentialism (subscale of biological basis) and the rephrased items --- p.165

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Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-88)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oklahoma, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [226]-231).

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This thesis seeks to answer the question of what it would be for a person to be persuaded rationally to believe that God exists, and tries to explain in a related way the possibility of rationality in Christian faith. I begin by explicating and defending the "ethics of belief" approach to epistemology. Then two competing ethics of belief are described: "Strong Formalism", which holds, through a voluntaristic decision, a deductivist epistemology; and "Soft Rationalism", which contains an infonnalist epistemology, and rejects voluntarism. Arguments for and against each view are canvassed. But I show that our attempted adjudication is blocked by the "Ultimate Rationality Problem": no ethic of belief seems able rationally to justify its view of rationality. I reduce the Problem to this fact: any view of rationality refutes itself which tries to give a foundational method of epistemic evaluation that both gives a verdict on every proposition and avoids self-justification. I reject several suggested solutions in favour of one which replaces the foundational view of justification by a contextual view. I then generate from the process of justification itself several common epistemic standards, which allow us rationally to favour Soft Rationalism over Strong Formalism. But the former is both foundationalist and needlessly opposed to formalism. I remedy these faults by developing a "Modest Formalist" ethic of belief: a'partly formal set of standards for rational metaphysical argument,"given in. the form of a set of constitutive rules for certain games of interpretive argument. In doing this I defend an improved theory of epistemic probability, and reveal the structure of our substantive views of rationality - as this virtue would be required of believings per se, of actions based on believings, and'of actions (such as living a Christian life) based on what I describe as "experimental faith".