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Can fictionalists have faith? It all depends

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2018

DANIEL HOWARD-SNYDER
DANIEL HOWARD-SNYDER*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98229, USA
*
e-mail: Daniel.Howard-Snyder@wwu.edu
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Abstract

Can fictionalists have faith? It all depends on how we disambiguate ‘fictionalists’ and on what faith is. I consider the matter in light of my own theory. After clarifying its central terms, I distinguish two fictionalists – atheistic and agnostic – and I argue that, even though no atheistic fictionalist can have faith on my theory, agnostic fictionalists arguably can. After rejecting Finlay Malcolm's reasons for thinking this is a problem, I use his paradigmatic agnostic fictionalist as a foil to explore a variety of ways in which to describe agnostic fictionalists, none of whom pose a problem for my theory.

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Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 447 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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