Faith: intention to form theistic beliefs

Despite the important role of faith in a religious way of life, there is no consensus on how this notion is to be understood. It is nevertheless widely believed that faith is a multifaceted concept possessing affective, evaluative, practical, and cognitive aspects. My goal in this paper is to provid...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Vahid, Hamid 1959- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Nature B. V 2023
In: International journal for philosophy of religion
Year: 2023, Volume: 93, Issue: 1, Pages: 39-50
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Faith / Propositional attitudes / Intention / Cognition
IxTheo Classification:AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
AE Psychology of religion
Further subjects:B Cognitive attitude
B Intention
B Faith
B Conative attitude
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Despite the important role of faith in a religious way of life, there is no consensus on how this notion is to be understood. It is nevertheless widely believed that faith is a multifaceted concept possessing affective, evaluative, practical, and cognitive aspects. My goal in this paper is to provide an account of the nature of propositional faith (in religious contexts) that is flexible enough to encompass different strengths or grades of faith. To do so, I focus on Howard-Snyder’s account of faith as a complex propositional attitude that seems to incorporate a number of plausible features of faith. It is argued, however, that, despite providing individual rational for each such feature, this account fails to provide a deep enough explanation of why those features are entailed by the nature of faith. To rectify this problem, I appeal to the phenomenology of acquiring faith to suggest an account of propositional faith in terms of the intention to form (theistic) beliefs. It is claimed that such a view can not only provide a unitary account of the different strengths of faith but also that it can explain why faith has the characteristics it is said to have.
ISSN:1572-8684
Contains:Enthalten in: International journal for philosophy of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s11153-022-09851-0