2024 Fellow

James Kraft

Professor, Huston-Tillotson University

Project:

Institution:

Huston-Tillotson University

Department:

Humanities

Of the many philosophical and religious ideas, which ones can I and my students be tethered to, and how would they support a life worth living?

Were my students and journal reviewers to get together talking about me, I think they would agree on the following:  “He always shows how every idea in religious studies and philosophy has limitations and blind spots.  He says that he is a positive skeptic, that he isn’t trying to deconstruct every philosophical and religious idea, and that he is just trying to show the limits for knowing them and for staying firmly tethered to them.  He is fond of praising Plato for talking about how justification (what he calls  “Logos”) is like a tether to something valuable keeping it in one’s position against theft.  Justification helps us stay connected to valuable beliefs because it provides support for beliefs that make them more likely true.  He also says his solution to positive skepticism is epistemic contextualism, the idea that standards of justification vary depending on contexts such that one can know something when the standards are low enough but no longer when the standards are too high.  He says this is his key to a life worth living, since in everyday life the standards are low one can know even if one can’t in higher standard contexts.”  I would agree with this description with additions.  I will be trying to integrate contextualism with what I call mindfulness-based self-knowledge (MBSK) in order to talk to my reviewers/students about how to have a life worth living in the face of sometimes conflicting while also compelling religious and philosophical ideas.

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