Virtuous Faith

In his recent paper titled "Faith and Epistemology" (see here or here),  Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa gives a refreshing look at faith and it's common occurrence in everyday reasoning. The paper is open access, so please give it your perusal.

Jenkins Ichikawa points out that faith is often disparaged as "going beyond the evidence." Faith is too often treated as an epistemic failure or a shirking of one's epistemic duty (think about such claims as found in the writings of Dawkins and his ilk). But, as he rightly points out, this is not always the case. In fact, faith can be an epistemic virtue.

What is interesting (to me) about his paper is that Jenkins Ichikawa is forced to contend with well established claims found in reformed epistemology. As I was reading, I wondered if he would address anything like Plantinga's properly-basic beliefs. And, happily, he does. It would have been unfortunate had he not. For those of us who are familiar, Jenkins Ichikawa's argument is very much like that of the reformed epistemologists. Of course, he demurs that his position is not like that of Plantinga's but at that point in his argument it is too late to put the cat back into the box. Once he has made his argument about the virtues of faith and it's sometimes inevitability, he can't go back and rely on some objective postion from which to critique Plantinga's position. Nonetheless, he tries.

I am grateful to Jenkins Itchikawa for this paper. It is time that we come to grips with the role faith plays in our everyday thinking and acting. The day of the all too certain dogmatist (religious, skeptic, or otherwise) who knows more than she does is over, gratefully. We all have faith, of one sort or another. All we need now is for more people to realize this, haha. And hopefully, with a recognition of our common reliance upon faith we can begin to nurture a common humility. At least, one can hope.