Coherentism and Foundationalism

This leads us to our next premise, premise II, which states there are rational beliefs that are not supported by sufficient evidence. Clark identifies these rational beliefs as those acquired through sensory experience and beliefs that are self-evident. He supports this premise by giving examples of some of these beliefs “..The sky is blue, grass is green ..”(139). He goes on to say, “ ...every proposition is either true or false..”(139). I think that by Clark including these examples of beliefs through sensory experiences and self-evidence, he seems to be saying that through our experiences, one can acquire beliefs even if our beliefs are false. It is rational to believe that the sky is blue because it is a belief we acquire through seeing the sky is blue. But according to Clark, seeing that the sky is blue is not enough sufficient evidence (like the sufficient

As we can discern from the example of Bella the dog, justification should be understood externally. Since justification is something that should

Human reason is the perception of how things might have came to be. It is the ability to consciously making sense of things and apply knowledge. Faith is the complete and total trust or confidence in someone or something. It can either be the belief in God or in the principles of religion. Faith and reason have each been sources of rationalization for religious belief. Many different authors provide evidence for the claim faith and reason is compatible. Saint Augustine believes that faith provides us with reason, but without reason faith would have never been known to man. Man’s knowledge cannot solely understand reason alone. Reason allows human beings to be brought to God and it is faith that provides us with those reasons. Saint Thomas Aquinas talks about how faith and reason are connected to one another. Both faith and reason are ways of finding the truth because faith is consistent with reason. In Plato’s Allegory of the cave, he expressed that the prisoner’s reasons within the cave misguided them towards faith and God. In the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, the fundamental claim of faith and reason is compatible is brought about in ways someone can find the truth.

How is the term justification defined by scholars? What is your own definition based on your research?

Discovering the right relationship between faith and reason matters as much as finding the right religion matters, yet the conflict seems irresolvable. Rationalists and fideists can both claim legitimate descent in the history of religion, but the essence of one view seems categorically unacceptable to the other.

They argue that the two beliefs are important in the sense that one belief defines another. Because the two beliefs are compatible, there is no room for contradicting the field of science or free will. In addition, both arguments allow a large number of important practices and institutions to be able to justify a case by looking at both sides of the argument.

The Doctrine of Justification has been a vital teaching throughout the history of Christianity and it is the fulcrum upon which the Church balances; even minor tweaking could result in drastic changes to our core beliefs. This Doctrine can be summarized to say that Justification is God’s declaration, that only through faith in his son’s suffering are we saved and are righteous in God’s sight. This teaching is as old as our religion and we can see this through its expression from both old and new testaments writers. Justification is at the heart of our faith, so it is important to be able to understand and analyze this fundamental Doctrine.

The Cosmological Argument as previously discussed, is the existence of the universe and “cosmos” is the direct suggestion that God exists. This can be and is often indicated as the “first-cause argument”. This is because they believe that God is the first reason for the cause of the existence of the universe. One of McCloskey first complaints is that people are not suitable to believe that the universe needs a cause. McCloskey finds this to be true simply because, it would require a root for the universe which in turn, would also obligate a source for God. He then continues to profess that even if the cosmological argument is able to facilitate us to hypothesize the existence of God, then there would be no reason to hypothesize that God has to be omniscient, omnipotent, and many more. There are living things in our world that have no clue how they came to be. Essentially everything that happens has to be caused by something, which would mean that the actualization of our universe has to be contingent on a cause. He also stated that he believes that the cosmological argument, “does not entitle us to postulate an all-powerful, all-perfect, uncaused cause,“ (McCloskey, 51).

When attempting to justify why they do or do not have a particular belief, many people today often have many opinions rather than reasons. (Ham 1)

God, in fact, has made a world where humans tend to believe him regardless of any facts. This sense of feeling the existence and presence of God, whether it be achieved through nature or love or hallucinogenic drugs, is perfectly reasonable for people to have. Its surety goes beyond argument or explanations brought about through infallible facts infallibly leading to infallible conclusions. Plantinga, then, through Reformed Epistemology, has broadened the horizons of a proper basic belief’s criteria. For a belief to be properly basic, it does not have to be based on other beliefs and it does not need to be justified by other beliefs or arguments. If one would agree with foundationalism, one wouldn’t be able to hold their beliefs about the presence of physical world or of other people, and that does not seem reasonable to

Besides BonJour's argument of illustrative examples, moderate rationalism is defended by two intimately related dialectical arguments. The argument is that the denial of a priori justification will lead to a severe skepticism, in which only the most direct experience could be justified. Stemming from this severe skepticism, comes the stronger argument that argumentation itself becomes impossible. This essay will describe the distinct segments of the argument and will demonstrate the relationship between the two arguments.

Pope John Paul II once said, “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.” (Fallible Blogma) Based on this significant and powerful quote, one can infer that faith and reason are directly associated and related. It can also be implied that the combination of faith and reason allows one to seek information and knowledge about truth and God; based on various class discussions and past academic teachings, it is understood that both faith and reason are the instruments that diverse parties

As is to be expected, the account of Non-foundational Coherentism is not without its flaws. Firstly, coherence is still too broadly defined by Bonjour to be useful. To illustrate the issue, consider two new belief systems A and B. If A is more inferentially dense but B is less anomalous in content, how do you decide which belief system is more likely? Curiously, Bonjour is largely silent on this point despite its dramatic consequences. The effect of this observation might lead one to the same skeptical conclusion as McGrew's linear foundationalism. In fact, this account may be even more troubling; the total number of possible coherent belief systems increases exponentially with the number of possible explanatory beliefs since such belief systems actually inhabit the powerset of these explanatory beliefs.

Faith and reason were two modes of belief that dominated the history of Western Civilization. Both faith and reason were popularized as tools to understand the universe in Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian eras. By conflicting with each other, these two modes of belief sparked a lot of controversy. Reason or rationality is belief based on concrete evidence and logic. The development of one’s reason relies heavily on observation and questioning. Greco-Roman philosophers believed in the power of the human mind to understand the world. So in order to find ultimate truth, Greco-Roman philosophers dedicated their lives to perfecting their reasoning skills and encouraged those around them to do the same. Contradictory to reason, faith is the

Even though the coherence theory of truth differs from the coherence theory of knowledge, which states that a belief is justified if the belief coheres with a set of beliefs that forms a coherent system (Audi,