John Henry Newman

While Newman scholars are nearly unanimous that John Henry Newman is an anti-skeptic, there is less agreement about the contours of his anti-skepticism. In this paper, we seek to lay bare the basic commitments of this anti-skepticism. First, we briefly discuss the type of skepticism with which Newman was most concerned. Second, we lay out Newman’s three-fold commitment to trust as the default epistemic stance. Third, we uncover Newman’s underlying commitment to a moderate form of evidentialism involving fallible evidence and (...) cumulative cases skillfully judged by the illative sense. With Newman’s epistemological commitments that undergird his anti-skepticism laid bare, we can then see more clearly that Newman belongs to the broader tradition of common sense epistemology. (shrink)

Among John Henry Newman’s contributions to epistemology, his notion of the “illative sense” may be both the most significant and yet the least understood. In this chapter, we seek to rectify this problem. First, we carefully lay out Newman’s notion of the illative sense. Second, we discuss and evaluate three ways in which the illative sense might be understood in light of contemporary epistemology and psychology. Third, we create a model that attempts to fill out Newman’s sketch of the illative (...) sense. We close by answering two prominent objections to the illative sense in light of our model. If we are correct, the illative sense was not only an important innovation in epistemology in the nineteenth century but is also a defensible notion today. (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine John Henry Newman’s epistemology in A Grammar of Assent, focusing on the relationship between inquiry, inference, and the unconditional act of assent. I begin by contrasting Newman’s "real" account of how the mind actually functions with John Locke’s "theoretical" requirement that belief must always be proportioned to evidence. I argue that Newman correctly identifies assent as an "all-in" attitude that brings the dynamic process of inquiry—inherently characterized by an "alloy of doubt"—to a close. A central (...) element of my analysis is the "illative sense," the faculty Newman identifies as guiding the transition from the conditional state of inference to the unconditional state of assent. To address the common objection that assent must admit of degrees, I draw on contemporary epistemology, specifically Jane Friedman’s distinction between settledness and stability. I propose that Newman’s "indefectible" assent refers to the binary state of settledness, while the feeling of "strength" in belief refers to stability. Finally, I consider how Newman’s views interact with modern Bayesian frameworks, ultimately showing how his description of everyday assent provides a robust defense for the legitimacy of religious belief. (shrink)

This chapter investigates whether John Henry Newman's epistemology encourages the intellectual vice of dogmatism. Although Newman famously endorsed a "magisterial intolerance" regarding objections, I argue that his philosophical framework supports "committed settling" rather than vicious "permanent settling." By distinguishing Newman’s position from the "tentative settling" advocated by thinkers like Karl Popper and William Froude, I illustrate how Newman views assent as an unqualified commitment that remains revisable under specific conditions. Central to this defense is an expanded definition of the "illative (...) sense," which is presented as the faculty responsible not only for closing inquiry but also for discerning when "accumulating probabilities" require it to be reopened. Drawing on contemporary research regarding "epistemic resilience" (grit) and cognitive load, I argue that Newman’s approach avoids both the "unreal" demands of excessive skepticism and the pitfalls of closed-mindedness, offering a realistic account of how human beings virtuously manage belief. (shrink)

Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion has traditionally been grounded in non-cognitivism about religious belief. This paper shows that the Wittgensteinian tradition has wrongly neglected a significant movement towards cognitivism in Wittgenstein’s later writings. The argument proceeds on the basis of two main claims. First, Wittgenstein’s mature philosophy, as expressed in his _Philosophical Investigations_, clearly favours cognitivism over non-cognitivism with regard to certain linguistic facts about ordinary religious discourse. Second, during the last decade of his life Wittgenstein’s view of religious belief actually (...) underwent a significant shift in the direction of cognitivism, which finds its most striking expression in the analogy he draws to the ‘honest religious thinker’. (shrink)

In recent years, Duncan Pritchard has developed a position in religious epistemology called quasi‐fideism that he claims traces back to John Henry Newman's treatment of the rationality of religious belief. In this paper, we give three reasons to think that Pritchard's reading of Newman as a quasi‐fideist is mistaken. First, Newman's parity argument does not claim that religious and non‐religious beliefs are on a par because both are groundless; instead, for Newman, they are on a par because both often stem (...) from implicit rather than explicit reasoning. Second, pace Pritchard, Newman's distinction between simple and complex assent does not map onto the Wittgensteinian distinction between groundless hinge commitments and beliefs that flow from these hinges. For Newman, simple and complex assent differ in terms of the believer's level of awareness of their grounds. Third, and finally, Newman does not reject Locke's evidentialism in toto. Instead, he argues that certitude is not restricted to beliefs stemming from intuition and demonstration but often rightly includes probabilistically supported (or fallibly evidenced) beliefs. (shrink)

The role of certitude in our mental lives is, to put it mildly, controversial. Many current epistemologists (including epistemologists of religion) eschew certitude altogether. Given his emphasis on certitude, some have maintained that John Henry Newman was an infallibilist about knowledge. In this paper, we argue that a careful examination of his thought (especially as seen in the Grammar of Assent) reveals that he was an epistemic fallibilist. We first clarify what we mean by fallibilism and infallibilism. Second, we explain (...) why some have read Newman as an infallibilist. Third, we offer two arguments that Newman is at least a fallibilist in a weak sense. In particular, the paradox he seeks to resolve in the Grammar and his dispute with John Locke both indicate that he is at least a weak fallibilist. We close with a consideration of whether Newman is a fallibilist in a much stronger sense as well. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest krytyczna analiza koncepcji J.H. Newmana, zgodnie z którą doświadczenie sumienia prowadzi jednostkę do wiary w Boga. Fenomenologiczna analiza doświadczenia moralnego prowadzi Newmana do wniosku, że doświadczenie to jest zrozumiałe tylko wtedy, jeśli zinterpretujemy sumienie jako głos Boga. Pokazuję – wbrew Newmanowi – że doświadczenie sumienia nie jest jednoznaczne. Nie da się wyjaśnić, dlaczego jednostka interpretuje je w kategoriach teistycznych, a nie jakichś innych. Potrzebne jest przyjęcie dodatkowych mechanizmów, które tłumaczą, dlaczego jednostka zinterpretowała swoje sumienie w kategoriach teistycznych. (...) Wskazuję, że w dziele Newmana można wyróżnić trzy takie mechanizmy. (shrink)

The article concerns the idea of University in the thought of John Henry Newman In particular the relationship with real assent, notional assent, principles, doctrine.