Communities of Faith: Religious and Scientific Traditions of Inquiry
How should we think of the relationship of religious faith and rationality? Sponsored by the ISRME and the Society for the Philosophy of Religion. Marmara University Ilahiyat Faculty, Mehmet Cengiz Building, Hall # 219
Since the Western Enlightenment, philosophical thought has portrayed the rational thinker as a radically autonomous individual. One must reject all forms of tradition and scorn the common opinions of one’s contemporaries in favor of reasoning for oneself from ‘first principles.’ But this autonomous ideal is unattainable in practice. From infancy, humans are massively dependent on others around them for much of what they know, and this dependency continues into adulthood. Even the sciences, humanity’s most impressive intellectual enterprise, are deeply communal.
Professor O’Connor will explore how a ‘social’ understanding of rational belief plays out in the sphere of religious commitment. For concreteness, he will discuss traditional Christian belief, but much of what he says will equally apply to other forms of religious belief. At the end of my remarks, he will briefly discuss the implications of pervasive religious disagreement for rational religious belief.
Timothy O’Connor is Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University Bloomington and a member of its Cognitive Sciences Program. He has published over sixty articles in metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action. He is the author of Persons and Causes (Oxford 2000) and Theism and Ultimate Explanation (Blackwell 2008) and the editor of five other volumes in the philosophy of mind and action and metaphysics. He is also editing a forthcoming volume of new essays titled Religious Faith and Intellectual Virtue(Oxford). He is currently a visting Plumer Fellow at Oxford University and is writing a book on the integration of Christian faith, reason, and contemporary science.
