the doxastic merit in view. Not only are some of the mediate ones not entitled; some of
the immediate ones also are not. Some basic beliefs are not proper. What initially
grabbed the attention of the Reformed epistemologist, however, was the Enlightenment
claim that none of the immediate ones is entitled. Why, he asks, would anyone suppose
that that was true? Or to put it from the other side: Why would anyone suppose that
religious beliefs, to be truth-relevantly meritorious, must always be based on other beliefs
that are not religious in character?
Vast numbers of religious beliefs are not held on the basis of other beliefs. None of these,
so it's claimed, is OK as it is. To be acceptable, something has to be done to them; they
have to be provided with rational bases. Theorists will, of course, play an indispensable
role in the construction of such bases. So what we have, in the line of thought we're
considering, is a massive critique of the practices of the everyday in favor of the practices
that are the province of the theorist. Why accept this critique? Why suppose that it is on
target?
We know, from our discussion earlier in this essay, the answer that John Locke gave to
this question. When dealing with religion, we're obligated to do the hu
end p.263
man best in governing and regulating belief formation and maintenance. With respect to
immediate beliefs, the best are those evoked by experience or rational intuition whose
propositional content corresponds to the fact that's experienced or intuited. Now add to
this Locke's assumption that God can neither be experienced by introspection or
perception, nor be rationally intuited. It just follows that immediate religious beliefs are
unacceptable. The acceptable ones, if there are such, will be found among those that are
based on acceptable nonreligious immediate beliefs.
This being the reason offered for the supposed necessity of rational grounding, the
Reformed epistemologist proceeds to scrutinize this Enlightenment epistemology, this
version of “classical foundationalism,” as it's customarily called. What he has to say on
this score has by now become so well-known that there's no point in dwelling on it. Let
me just observe that the attack has concentrated on three points of vulnerability.
For one thing, versions of classical foundationalism, Locke's included, always prove to
give the wrong results. For example, sometimes it will be a matter of maximal
concernment to form correct beliefs about the future. Hume showed decisively, however,
that inductively formed beliefs about the future are neither direct deliverances of
experience and reason nor capable of being rationally grounded in such deliverances.
Accordingly, doing the best in one's formation of such beliefs cannot take the form of
conforming to Locke's proposal.
Second, classical foundationalism proves to have an odd referential incoherence about it.
Consider the proffered criterion for entitled belief. If the criterion is correct, then it seems
clear that no one is entitled to hold it. Nobody would be entitled to hold it immediately;
the criterion is not a self-evident necessary fact that we can rationally intuit, nor,
obviously, is it a fact of our inner life or the external world. And nobody has yet stepped
forth with an argument that successfully bases the criterion on properly held immediate
beliefs about necessary facts, the inner life, or the external world. That leaves open the
possibility that, on a correct account of entitlement, some person somewhere is entitled to