Faith and Rational Deference to Authority
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Abstract
Many accounts of faith hold that faith is deference to an authority about what to
believe or what to do. I show that this kind of faith fits into a more general account of faith, the
risky-commitment account. I further argue that it can be rational to defer to an authority even
when the authority’s pronouncement goes against one’s own reasoning. Indeed, such deference is
rational in typical cases in which individuals treat others as authorities