Commonsense, skeptical theism, and different sorts of closure of inquiry defeat
Abstract
Trent Dougherty argues (contra Jonathan Matheson) that when taking into consideration the probabilities involving skeptical theism (ST) and gratuitous evils, an agent may reasonably affirm both ST and that gratuitous evils exist. In other words, Dougherty thinks that assigning a greater than .5 probability to ST is insufficient to defeat the commonsense problem of evil. I argue that Dougherty’s response assumes, incorrectly, that ST functions solely as an evidential defeater, and that, when understood as a closure of inquiry defeater, ST may still defeat reasonable belief in gratuitous evils, even in the face of strong evidence that gratuitous evils exist.
Citation
Rutledge , J 2017 , ' Commonsense, skeptical theism, and different sorts of closure of inquiry defeat ' , Faith and Philosophy , vol. 34 , no. 1 , pp. 17-32 . https://doi.org/10.5840/faithphil201712576
Publication
Faith and Philosophy
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2153-3393Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2016, Publisher / the Author. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.5840/faithphil201712576
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