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Huang on Wittgenstein on religious epistemology

Jordan Curnutt

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Abstract

Yong Huang has recently claimed that after the demise of foundationalism, philosophy and theology can turn to Ludwig Wittgenstein's non-foundationalist or coherentist religious epistemology where, it is said, religious beliefs are justified by a ‘reflective equilibrium’ with other kinds of beliefs, with action, and with different ‘forms of life’. I argue that there are very good reasons to reject this reading of Wittgenstein: not only unsupported, it is seriously mistaken. Once the epistemological terms of the debate are properly understood, the evidence indicates that Wittgenstein's view of religious beliefs is a form of foundationalism, not coherentism.

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Yong Huang has recently claimed that after the demise of foundationalism, philosophy and theology can turn to Ludwig Wittgenstein's non-foundationalist or coherentist religious epistemology where, it is said, religious beliefs are justified by a ‘reflective equilibrium’ with other kinds of beliefs, with action, and with different ‘forms of life’. I argue that there are very good reasons to reject this reading of Wittgenstein: not only unsupported, it is seriously mistaken. Once the epistemological terms of the debate are properly understood, the evidence indicates that Wittgenstein's view of religious beliefs is a form of foundationalism, not coherentism.

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Available abstract

Yong Huang has recently claimed that after the demise of foundationalism, philosophy and theology can turn to Ludwig Wittgenstein's non-foundationalist or coherentist religious epistemology where, it is said, religious beliefs are justified by a ‘reflective equilibrium’ with other kinds of beliefs, with action, and with different ‘forms of life’. I argue that there are very good reasons to reject this reading of Wittgenstein: not only unsupported, it is seriously mistaken. Once the epistemological terms of the debate are properly understood, the evidence indicates that Wittgenstein's view of religious beliefs is a form of foundationalism, not coherentism.

Key concepts: Foundationalism, Coherentism, Philosophy, Epistemology, Demise, Philosophy of religion, Law, Political science

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