This talk concerns the role of faith in what you do and what you believe.

Lara Buchak, a philosophy professor at Princeton University, argues that having faith in a claim means acting on that claim without further evidence, and remaining committed to acting on that claim even in the face of evidence against it. Buchak shows that having faith can be rational in certain circumstances, and that those who lack faith stand to miss out on important goods. Buchak then applies this view of faith to two puzzles about belief. The first is how to explain the phenomenon of traditions or paradigms in scientific, religious, and moral life, and the phenomenon of conversion from one tradition to another. The second is whether it can ever be rational to defer to an authority rather than our own reason.

Buchak's research interests include decision theory, social choice theory, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Her book Risk and Rationality (2013) concerns how an individual ought to take risk into account when making decisions. It vindicates the ordinary decision-maker from the point of view of even ideal rationality. A significant upshot of her view is that individuals with different attitudes toward risk—considered as different ways to weigh worse scenarios against better ones—can all be rational.

Her research following the book has focused on applications of her view to ethics, arguing that we ought to defer to individuals’ risk-attitudes in biomedical research; that we ought to weigh worse scenarios very heavily in setting climate policy; and that we ought to care a great deal about the interests of the worse-off when acting ethically.

Another ongoing project is on the nature and rationality of faith, both in the religious and mundane sense. She argues that faith requires stopping one's search for evidence and making a commitment -- and maintaining one's commitment in the face of counterevidence. She details when such faith is rational, and how it is beneficial to human life.

Other topics Buchak has written on include group decision-making; the relationship between assigning probability to a hypothesis and believing that hypothesis outright; and the nature of free will. 

This lecture is sponsored by The M. Holmes Hartshorne Memorial Lecture Fund.