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Paper   IPM / Philosophy / 16979
School of Analytic Philosophy
  Title:   Faith: Intention to Form Theistic Beliefs
  Author(s):  Hamid Vahid
  Status:   Published
  Journal: International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
  No.:  1
  Vol.:  93
  Year:  2023
  Pages:   39-50
  Supported by:  IPM
  Abstract:
Despite the important role of faith in a religious way of life, there is no consensus on how this notion is to be understood. It is nevertheless widely believed that faith is a multifaceted concept possessing affective, evaluative, practical, and cognitive aspects. My goal in this paper is to provide an account of the nature of propositional faith (in religious contexts) that is flexible enough to encompass different strengths or grades of faith. To do so, I focus on Howard-Snyderâ??s account of faith as a complex propositional attitude that seems to incorporate a number of plausible features of faith. It is argued, however, that, despite providing individual rational for each such feature, this account fails to provide a deep enough explanation of why those features are entailed by the nature of faith. To rectify this problem, I appeal to the phenomenology of acquiring faith to suggest an account of propositional faith in terms of the intention to form (theistic) beliefs. It is claimed that such a view can not only provide a unitary account of the different strengths of faith but also that it can explain why faith has the characteristics it is said to have.

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