Faith and Philosophy· 2026Q1
"One Need Not Hope in Order to Undertake One's Work": Pragmatic Warrant, Existential Arguments, and Accepting Theism
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
This paper argues that pragmatic warrant, where basic commitments are justified by their usefulness rather than evidence, does not obviously support theistic belief.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Pragmatic warrant suggests basic commitments are justified by their usefulness, not evidence.
- Existential arguments for theism often rely on pragmatic warrant.
- Theistic commitment's necessity for supernatural goods (meaning, afterlife) is questioned.
- The value of worldly goods like optimism, potentially underpinned by theism, is debated for pragmatic warrant.
- Pragmatic moral arguments face challenges in maintaining that an aim is morally required and theism is necessary for it.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Suppose that, in most domains of belief, our basic commitments are warranted not evidentially but pragmatically. Is that good news for efforts to warrant theistic commitment? Not obviously, I argue by way of a critique of several recent existential arguments for theism. It’s unclear that theistic commitment is a necessary, or even viable, means of gaining supernatural goods like cosmic meaning or a happy afterlife. And it’s unclear that this-worldly (putative) goods it arguably underpins—in particular, a specific sort of optimism—are sufficiently valuable to generate pragmatic warrant. I suggest in conclusion that, while pragmatic moral arguments avoid some of these difficulties, it’s challenging to maintain both that an aim is morally required and that theistic faith is necessary for its realization. Prospects for a strong pragmatic warrant for theistic commitment thus remain uncertain at best.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Faith and Philosophy, 2026 · DOI ↗
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