Monday, December 13, 2010

Some Thoughts on Religious Exclusivism

In my last post I explored the religious pluralism endorsed by, among others, the theologian John Hick and my mother. Both see the various religions of the world as historically and culturally situated responses to a transcendent reality. But this transcendent reality is infinite, and our grasp of it is only partial (what “part” we see being a function of what our cultural ideas and presuppositions enable us to see). Furthermore, this transcendent reality defies literal description in terms of ordinary human concepts. As such, Hick and my mother see all religious belief systems as literally false. These systems of belief need to be understood as metaphors, as gestures towards a mystery that defies our understanding. As metaphors, their worth is measured pragmatically—by how well they help us to attune ourselves with this transcendent reality, and so live our lives in harmony with it. Insofar as different religious traditions succeed in achieving this goal, they are all pathways to “salvation” in the broadest sense, and they all have a share in “truth” in some non-literal, pragmatic sense.


Now there is much about this picture of religion that I admire and think is on the right track. Clearly, there is much religious language and narrative that is best understood as metaphorical—and that loses its value when treated in essentially literal terms (the first two chapters of Genesis come to mind). But this does not entail that all religious doctrines and narratives are purely metaphorical, that there is nothing implied by a statement like “God is good” that could qualify as literally correct. Respecting religious diversity doesn’t require denying this possibility. Nor does admitting this possibility undermine the pluralistic interpretation of religious diversity. The hypothesis that the diversity of religions is consistent with a common inspiration, that this diversity springs from the same well of divine revelation, doesn’t depend on the nothing-but-metaphor hypothesis.

Recall again the Hindu parable of the blind men who encounter an elephant. If the man who grasps the trunk says, “It’s a snake,” that will be literally false but metaphorically useful. But if the same man says, “It’s flexible,” that is not a metaphor. And when the blind man who grasps the tusk says, “It’s hard,” that is not a metaphor either. In this case, the diversity arises because, even though they are using literal language to correctly describe what they've encountered, they are in contact with different parts of the beast.

But whatever we think of the issue of just how much religious language is metaphorical (and this issue here is not one of all-or-nothing), the idea that divine revelation is limited to one faith tradition—and that there are no insights into ultimate reality that can be gleaned from serious attention to other worldviews, other traditions—is deeply troubling. We might call this view “extreme doctrinal exclusivism”: the view that divine revelation has only been poured into your faith tradition, and that all other traditions are mere lies and human invention.

(Notice that someone like PZ Myers, on this definition, qualifies as a certain kind of extreme doctrinal exclusivist, insofar as he regards all supernatural religious traditions as nothing but lies and human invention. This may help explain why, when religious fundamentalists give up their faith, they are more likely to become atheists in Dawkins’ or Myers’ mold than they are to become pluralists. From the starting point of “They’re all made up except one,” it’s a shorter step to “They’re all made up” than to “They’re all finite, partial, and fallible responses to the same underlying transcendent reality.”)

Much of my aversion to extreme doctrinal exclusivism is pragmatic. First of all, if different religious traditions do have insights to share with one another, and wisdom to gain through such sharing, then the idea that one’s own tradition has exclusive access to all the truths that matter would block the open-mindedness which is a prerequisite for such mutual learning. This seems a bad pragmatic bet.

Furthermore, this extreme exclusivism seems a pathway to a kind of ideological division, a cultural bifurcation of the world into “us” (those who have been enlightened) and “them” (all others, who’ve been left in the dark). If human history has taught us anything, it is that such divisions are a source of intractable conflict and violence. No good has ever come of them.

These pragmatic considerations can be supplemented with theological ones. If there is a God anything like what the Judeo-Christian tradition affirms, it would seem strange indeed that this God would limit divine self-disclosure to one small corner of the world, leaving the rest of humanity in the dark about the existence and presence of a caring creator until such a time as unsubstantiated testimonies should wend there way across the globe. And if there is some other sort of transcendent reality which has in some fashion impressed itself upon the consciousness of people in one cultural and historical context, it would seem strange that it wouldn’t happen in other cultural and historical contexts, given that it is the same human nature that exists everywhere.

None of this, however, implies that one religion won’t have insights that other religions lack, or that one religion won’t have been the only vessel into which some distinctive truth of great importance has fallen. In fact, the possibility of religious traditions learning from one another seems to presuppose that each religious tradition at least potentially carries insights that are unique—insights into the divine that are left out, underappreciated, or mistakenly rejected by the others.

Not only does it seem important not to deny this possibility when considering traditions other than one’s own. It seems important not to deny this possibility when it comes to one’s own faith tradition. In other words, it is consistent with this model of interreligious respect to believe that your own faith tradition has something important to contribute to the conversation, some insight into the truth that other religions might not have.

And if you do believe this--perhpas with respect to most central and distinctive teachings of your faith tradition--aren’t you then being an exclusivist about those teachings? Clearly, you’re not being a soteriological exclusivist—that is, you’re not ascribing to the view that salvation only comes through your faith, and that adherents to rival religious traditions are damned. Nor are you an extreme doctrinal exclusivist.

But you would be an exclusivist in a broader sense, encompassed by the following definition of exclusivism offered by Alvin Plantinga: “the exclusivist holds that the tenets or some of the tenets of one religion—Christianity, let’s say—are in fact true; he adds, naturally enough, that any propositions, including other religious beliefs, that are incompatible with those tenets are false." (emphasis added)

Another point to keep in mind about religious exclusivism is that the Hickian pluralist is an exclusivist on a meta-level. While Hickian pluralists do not hold that one religion is true and others false, don’t they hold that their pluralistic take on religion is correct, and that other takes on religion are incorrect to the extent that they disagree? It seems so, and this is what leads Kevin Meeker, for example, to conclude, “The real debate is not whether we should exclude, but what type of exclusion is defensible… In short, there is no sharp dividing line between exclusivism and pluralism; so we are faced with a continuum of options.”

In fact, it is precisely because progressive religion does exclude, does reject some modes of religious expression (most notably fundamentalism), that it doesn’t fall prey to Sam Harris’s overgeneralized critique of moderate religion. Harris accuses moderate religion of teaching the “terrible dogma” that “every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God.”

But religious progressives don’t believe this terrible dogma. They reject the image of God as a vengeful tyrant, insisting that such an image is dangerously mistaken. That’s exclusion. They reject the notion that God has entrusted His revelation to only one faith in human history. That’s exclusion, too. They reject the idea that God chose to reveal His will inerrantly in a single holy book. That’s exclusion. They reject the notion that God planted fossils of creatures that never existed and created evidence of great age in a world that is only a few thousand years old, all in order to test the faith of those who might question His inerrant literal revelation in the aforementioned holy book. That, again, is exclusion.

Without some measure of exclusivism, religious believers would fall prey to Harris’s terrible dogma. And so I don’t want to treat exclusivism in every sense of the word as an evil. There are reasons to exclude—some based on a preponderance of empirical evidence, some based on morally pernicious implications, some based on logical coherence, some based on pragmatic fruits.

But sometimes we don’t have compelling reasons of any of these kinds. What then? Under those circumstances, should assuduously eschew exclusivism in any form?

Perhaps not. Allen Stairs, a philosopher at the University of Maryland, attempts to offer a portrait of a certain kind of religious exclusivism—what I’m tempted to call a friendly exclusivism—that might be legitimate even if you have no compelling reason to reject those who disagree with you.

Stairs explains what he has in mind by offering a kind of portrait of a certain sort of religious believer: one who doesn’t “settle for a vague, free-floating theism” but has more concrete religious beliefs that exceed what the weight of evidence can sustain. But her belief, he says, “is not a sham; she thinks they might really be true and that even if they aren’t fully true, they capture something important about the Ultimate. They also flesh out her sense of the Ultimate into something that can form the basis for a religious practice.” Stairs goes on to describe the view as follows:

…Plantinga takes religious belief at face value; Hick maintains that all specific religious belief is strictly speaking false. The view we’re considering isn’t like either of these. It agrees that, broadly speaking, the believer is entitled to trust her sense that the skeptic is wrong. It allows that perhaps some one religion captures The Truth, and perhaps the Ultimate is a Kantian noumenon, entirely beyond our cognitive grasp. At the level of practice, however, the view is more like exclusivism; the Hindu will believe as a Hindu does; the Christian will believe like a Christian. But behind the belief there will be a higher-level lightness; not an ironic attitude, but trust coupled with a deep sense of epistemic humility.”
In capturing this “higher-level lightness,” Stairs offers the example of Paul, a Roman Catholic who accepts the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation—that is, the belief that the bread and wine really become the body and blood of Christ in the Mass. “Nonetheless,” Stairs writes, “he knows that most people, including many Christians, believe otherwise. I think the following is perfectly possible: actively believing this is deeply important to Paul’s religious identity. At the same time, actively disbelieving contrary doctrines isn’t important to him at all.”

Paul, as portrayed by Stairs, feels no urgent need to persuade those who think otherwise. They are as entitled to their view as he is to his own. Even so, he remains deeply devoted to this doctrine to the exclusion of others that conflict with it. He believes this and not that. But if you believe that, it doesn’t bother him in the least. And, says Stairs, “he might not be willing to say that people with this Protestant view are making a mistake, and if asked whether he thinks they are wrong, he might reply that the question seems beside the point for him; saying ‘no’ would do a bad job of capturing his attitude, but so would saying ‘yes.’”

Stairs offers a careful look at what he takes to be the underlying rationale for this kind of attitude. I won’t go into the details, but the core of it is a balance between two things: first, the inescapable sense (which defines the person as a believer) that “there is something Ultimate and that it is to be trusted or even loved,” a sense that excludes “beliefs that make the Ultimate morally ugly”; second, an awareness that the specific elaboration of this sense which grounds our religious life does not rise to the level of knowledge, and as such could be mistaken. Not only that, but on crucial matters other religious traditions could, on matters where they disagree with us, be right, or partially right—or the nature of the divine could defy our grasp in such a way that the tension between our own views and those of rival faiths might do a better job of capturing the divine reality than any of those beliefs alone.

The kind of “friendly exclusivist” Stairs has in mind (which Stairs is inclined to call a “pluralist exclusivist”) holds to her religious beliefs in a manner that does not rule out these possibilities—that one’s beliefs are in error, that one has mistaked metaphors for literal descriptions, that one can gain genuine insight from listening to and engaging with those who have an opposing view.

So, is this kind of exclusivism something we should hold up as legitimate, as expressing a way of cleaving to religious faith that is (in language I use elsewhere) intellectually respectable and morally benign? I think more needs to be said before reaching any final conclusions, but it does seem right to me that we should resist the urge to too quickly label exclusivism as “bad” and pluralism as “good,” and treat the two as incommensurable opposites. The situation, as usual, is muddier and messier than that.

50 comments:

  1. Eric

    This fascinates me. Stair's view, as you describe it, is certainly highly appealing. It is difficult though; it requires a certain intellectual flexibility perhaps, to avoid floating away on a cloud of irony.

    The statement 'I believe this to be true, but I understand I might be wrong about this' is a hard one for me to get my head around. Under examination it seems to collapse to 'maybe this is true.'

    Then, under pragmatism, 'maybe this is true' seems to collapse to 'it might be useful to believe this': yet for a religious truth to be useful, it almost seems to require that I could believe it was true in a non-pragmatic sense before the it could yield up it's pragmatic advantages. Enter irony.

    Bernard

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  2. Hi, Eric

    "... it’s a shorter step to “They’re all made up” than to “They’re all finite, partial, and fallible responses to the same underlying transcendent reality.”

    "As metaphors, their worth is measured pragmatically—by how well they help us to attune ourselves with this transcendent reality, and so live our lives in harmony with it."

    "They also flesh out her sense of the Ultimate into ..."

    Is there a transcendent reality? Metaphors are ways to make some abstruse knowledge or feeling more readily expressed or communicated. You have literally no idea what is on the other side of this metaphor in any explicit terms. Thus, if it is not knowledge you are communicating, the most reasonable interpretation is that the many metaphors being employed express feelings.

    And that puts the putative "transcendent reality" in quite another light. A pleasant conspiracy of religious-minded people willing to suspend their doctrinal differences for a common conviction that "something is out there" sounds nice. But there remains a class of people and views that are apparently beyond the pale .. left out of your afternoon with tea and crumpets. If those views were some watchtower cult fringe, it would be one thing.

    The irony is that it is those exiled views that actually have the best all-around philosophical support, as you obliquely admit with reference to ..."exceed what the weight of evidence can sustain". If you were serious about "a deep sense of epistemic humility", you wouldn't indulge in these claims in the first place, however diffidently, lightly, ironically, or whatever.

    cont...

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  3. "If human history has taught us anything, it is that such divisions are a source of intractable conflict and violence. No good has ever come of them."

    Why are these issues intractable? Questions like whether women were turning into witches, or lightning was caused by angry gods have proved quite tractable.. they turn out to be false. The reason your questions are so intractable is very likely due to their being badly posed questions with answers religious people don't want to hear.

    It seems that pluralism gets you half-way to where you want to go. It achieves a truce among variant whacky ideas, (as you rightly say, with selective exclusivism), without actually resolving them in a rational way, which we have plenty of materials at hand to do. You and Stairs seem to be describing a kind of double-think where one "believes", but not enough to really stake anything serious on it. Which I certainly applaud when it comes to religion, but it remains a bit incoherent.

    My metaphor for all this would be a Star Trek convention where the Klingon fans agree not to attack the Federation fans, and all go home pleasantly convinced that they still know to right way to run a galactic empire. As much as William Shatner may try, he can not manage to convince them to .. get a life! Not much of a metaphor, perhaps, but you get the idea.

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  4. Burk

    Is it possible that some of this comes down to a difference in the use of language, particularly the word believe?

    I use the word believe on a number of levels. I believe the earth is round in quite a different way from how I say I believe we have an obligation to save something of the environment for future generations, and both are different to the way I believe the latest Franzen novel is not a patch on The Corrections, and that's different from how I believe tomorrow is worth staying alive for, and that's different from my belief in the need to rescue a version of free will.

    I think if we translate Stair's position using belief in terms of predictive confidence, it is vulnerable to the criticism you are making. But it's not clear to me this is the style of belief intended here. Nor is it clear that these other forms of belief are unimportant.

    Bernard

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  5. Hi All: Burk's point made me think about my personal situation. Because after reading what Stair's wrote, his view seems to describe my situation quite well. I believe in God for various reasons that aren't relevant to the issue. I find that the image of Christ seems to fit with my intuitions and beliefs ABOUT God quite well. This led me to experiment with Christian worship, and I feel more and more connected to Christianity as the years go by. So I DO believe in the main doctrines of the Gospel--2nd person of the Trinity, Resurrection, Savior of All etc., they seem to fit best with my deepest feelings about God. And if you press me on the issue I'd say therefore I think religious claims inconsistent with those doctrines are false. But I am not sure about that, I am less sure about those details than I am about God's existence. And I am not bothered by the fact that I could be wrong--I could be wrong about anything. What I have to do is continue experimenting. But it seems to me that a religious experiment is a life long project, so I cannot try every possible religion to see which one is right, no more than I could make a life long commitment to every possible woman to decide if the one I actually married is the right one for me. If religion is more like a love than a scientific hypothesis, I have no choice but to go with my gut.

    But recognizing my own fallibility, it seems to me I ought to be respectful of other people who conclude differently from me. I am not in their heads so I cannot assume their experiences wrt their religions are the same kinds of experiences as mine, I cannot assume their experiences are more convincing or less convincing. All I can know are my own experiences, and all I can do is make my own choice, and try my best to understand the people who see things differently.

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  6. I find the behaviour of Paul, as portrayed by Stairs, interesting in a puzzling kind of way. Paul believes in transubstantiation as being literally true and, more, it's at the core of its identity. But:

    Paul [...] feels no urgent need to persuade those who think otherwise. They are as entitled to their view as he is to his own.

    Now, if Mary says that apple pie is the greatest dessert in the world, she might not care that others think differently. This is a matter of taste. But if she believes that, as a matter of fact, there are bits of apple in apple pie, it would a strange thing to say that others are entitled to their own view of the subject.

    [Paul] might not be willing to say that people with [a different] view are making a mistake.

    Mary can't say that those who dislike apple pie are mistaken. However, not to say that denying the presence of bits of apple in apple pie is a mistake strikes me as, well, a bit rich.

    At the same time, Paul is not in doubt. He is not saying “I think this might be true, but I'm not sure. Let's discuss this.” No, he's not interested in what others think, or only very remotely. He sticks to his view and cannot take a stand on whether it is true or false – while strongly believing it.

    If there is a pattern here, it's that Paul's beliefs are much more akin to opinion or preferences than to a literal belief in some truth about reality. And this leads us directly to Bernard's take on this. Paul chooses to believe because it is simply convenient, useful or even necessary. But it remains a made-up belief, a metaphor of sort, adopted for its pragmatic value, wrapped in a language of literal truth but only in a superficial and ultimately unimportant manner.

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  7. Bernard-

    Yes, that is an excellent point. But better terminology would be extremely helpful. The use of "belief" plays right into Sam Harris's case that moderate theism is a gateway drug and cultural cover for fundamentalists who really believe what others pay so much lip-service to.

    "Faith" is even worse than "belief", so what to use? Perhaps the series of - like, appreciate, love- as in .. I love the Christian message, without giving it philosophical/scientific/factual credence.. something like that might work. It is formally the same as saying I appreciate Mark Rothko, and I like Edward Hopper, but I love Vermeer. That would clarify a good deal, I think, stating what resonates, without muddying the waters with ontological claims.

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  8. What we are dealing with, however, ARE ontological claims--but ones that one is drawn to because they are beautiful, or because they resonate, or because they provide a deeply significant organizing framework for one's life, or because of their valuable practical fruits, or because they fit elements of experience together in a way that doesn't force one to dismiss cruical experiences as delusional (etc.)

    I want to throw out a suggestion, something that's just occured to me which might explain Paul's position and why it seems like a strange hybrid. I'm not sure what I think of the suggestion, but I think it has promise so I want to hear what others think.

    The suggestion is this: What may really be at work here is a fundamental disagreement about the epistemological significance of the kinds of (non-empirical) grounds for attaching oneself to ontological claims listed above. That is, the difference between Mary's claim that the pie has bits of apple in it and Paul's claim that the host transforms into the body of Christ is this: The epistemic significance of the grounds for belief in the former case is recognized by all to provide warrant for belief; whereas in the latter case, Paul TAKES his grounds for belief to have epistemic warrant but recognizes this as controversial and disputed (and is aware of the difficulty of assessing epistemic significance outside the field of overlapping consensus on this issue).

    In other words, in the former case Mary not only believes, and not only believes that she has good reason to believe, but believes that others should see her reasons as good reasons to believe. What is missing in Paul's case is the last of these.

    What do others think of this?

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  9. One might just as well say that Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel (or Valerie Simpson) were making ontological claims with their onion song

    They are simply bad claims- claims that should be left to professionals (i.e scientists). Knock yourself out with metaphors, but don't transubstantiate them!

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  10. Hi Eric

    I think the distinction between those beliefs we can reasonably expect others to share, and those we can't, is most important. I maintain that language should be used carefully so as to distinguish between the two states. I like to call the first category facts: not because we're certain they're right, but because we can all agree they're our best current guess. Loosely speaking, science is a fact generating machine.

    When it comes to personal beliefs, like Paul's, there seem to me to be two possible reasons why we don't expect others to hold them. The first, which I prefer, is that they're not ontological claims. Rather they are statements about what feels right to me which others, when they hear my reasons, may or may not share.

    The other alternative is that Paul believes that he is right about transubstantiation. He sees it as a fact about the world, albeit one that's hard to establish. He acknowledges he may be wrong about transubstantiation, but insists somebody has to be right. So he has two convictions: that he is right (while acknowledging he may not be) and that somebody is right (which he is sure of). Here transubstantiation moves away from being a metaphor, a way of thinking about existence, and becomes an actual state of the world that is either true or not true.

    Moving from an acceptance of the transcendent, to a belief that our sense of the transcendent can be translated into true/false statements, is the leap that seems to cause the problem. Where does the conviction that this move is legitimate come from? If we are happy to have concepts that transcend time, space and causation, why not go the whole way and transcend exists/doesn't exist as well? At which point everybody could agree that what we have here are metaphors which can count as tremendously valuable personal truths.

    Bernard

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  11. Yes, Paul might recognize that his belief is controversial. However, consider this:

    As it happens, Mary is an astrobiologist working at Nasa and she believes from the evidence that microbial life in the methane lakes of Saturn's moon Titan is a strong possibility. This is a controversial position because she knows the evidence can be interpreted otherwise (and most do). So, she follows with interest what others say, keeping up with the latest research. When discussing with a skeptical colleague, she will say “I think you're wrong but only time will tell”. If it turns out she is indeed wrong, she will be of course disappointed but will go on to work on another project.

    Her friend Susan is reading a book by some “Doctor” Z. Smith explaining his new theory on food, healthy lifestyle, and so on. She has read some reviews and knows Dr. Smith's theories are pretty controversial, rejected by most in the medical community as “based on no evidence whatsoever”. Nevertheless, she persists and finds that what Smith writes makes a lot of sense to her. She begins applying his principles and, soon, sees improvements in her life. She feels healthier, more “empowered”, in harmony with the universe, and so forth, to the point that Smith's way of life has become a strong part of her identity. What others say about these theories doesn't interest her and when a skeptical friend tells her Dr. Smith's theories don't make any sense, she answers “they may not be right for you but they work for me. You have to find your own answers.”

    Now, Susan (like Paul?) has adopted beliefs that work for her and give meaning to her life. In a pragmatic sense, they are “true” for her and they have really improved her life. It doesn't really matter if Dr. Smith's theories are true or not and, in fact, she is not trying to find out – it is irrelevant, as long as they “work” for her. And, to be sure, there is nothing wrong with that. The importance of knowing “Truth” may be overrated.

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  12. Hi J P:

    Especially when we are talking about something that cannot be decided by objective/scientific methods. Science cannot answer the question of whether God exists, or if he loves us etc. I find myself quite convinced that God exists, and I find that in Christian worship I feel like I am very connected to God and this helps me feel more connected to my fellow human beings. It sure RINGS true to me.

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  13. Hi JP

    The problem with Susan emerges when it comes to providing advice/support to others. Let's say that in fact Dr Smith's theories are hopeless and a friend, feeling unwell, asks Susan for advice. The 'well it works for me but you have to find your own answer' no longer holds. Her friend's complaint may be serious, and the time taken to seek appropriate treatment may be crucial.

    Similarly, we as a wider society have to make decisions about whether Dr Smith's programme should be publicly funded for example, or indeed if it has generally harmful consequences, if it should be banned.

    So there is something interesting going on here I think. At the point where private beliefs become public we somehow have to fashion a new set of standards by which they can be assessed. And a starting point for that may involve acknowledging the difference between a personal truth and one that is more broadly applicable.

    Bernard

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  14. Darrell-

    I believe I have adequately addressed the point you repeat. Ontological claims should be addressed by ontological professionals- i.e. scientists.

    Those making claims about "realities" should put up (evidence) or be very aware (or be made aware) that they are engaging in metaphorical artistry, self-appreciation and expression, furtherance of traditions.. any number of worthy pursuits, but none having to do with actual ontology.

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  15. Bernard,

    “…At the point where private beliefs become public we somehow have to fashion a new set of standards by which they can be assessed. And a starting point for that may involve acknowledging the difference between a personal truth and one that is more broadly applicable.”

    As I have pointed out before (so here I go again), we tend to falsely categorize here and say something like, “religious beliefs are private and personal, while my own beliefs are universally held or somehow objective…” But this is false. It is also true that the atheistic/materialist/philosophical naturalist world-view or philosophy is also a private belief in the same sense. Both the religious person and the atheist agree that the earth is round, gravity is real, and the sun is really really hot. However, the moment one begins to sum up and articulate the meaning behind the “facts” or what the “facts” might point to and then as a culture formulate this all together into areas of public policy, law, and so forth we are then into philosophy and our interpretation of the facts.

    The question really is whose “personal” truth is more broadly applicable and why. I would qualify this further however to say that if our personal philosophy does indeed happen to “resonate” as Eric put it, then it could be one has connected to something that is true in a universal and objective way, and therefore is not an invented personal subjective truth. But either way, I really think it is misguided to equate beliefs that spring from “religion” or faith as personal and private while everyone else’s beliefs are somehow universal and public. Once we acknowledge that indeed gravity is real and the sun is hot, if we want to move on from there, we all are walking by faith at that point—and we all become philosophers at that point.

    When one hears things like, “religious belief is private and personal while my own beliefs are public and universal,” we should be aware of the smuggling project about to begin, because it is a privileging of one own views over the other’s.

    What I am also getting at is that I don’t think anyone adequately addressed Eric’s point:

    “What we are dealing with, however, ARE ontological claims--but ones that one is drawn to because they are beautiful, or because they resonate, or because they provide a deeply significant organizing framework for one's life, or because of their valuable practical fruits, or because they fit elements of experience together in a way that doesn't force one to dismiss crucial experiences as delusional (etc.)”

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  16. Burk,

    You have addressed many things, but I don't believe you have ever really given us a good reason for believing what you do, without simply begging the question.

    (Note to Eric: My posts keep disappearing and I’m not sure now if I have posted the same thing more than once.)

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  17. Darrell-

    You ask.. why? From the wiki site.. "Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.

    Doesn't this definition look earily similar to what scientists do? It isn't metaphysics at all- it is physics! It is the study, description, classification, analysis, etc. of reality. How that reality feels to us, how it seems and appears to us- that would be psychology, art, perhaps even neuroscience if you will. But if an entity "EXISTS", then call in a professional!

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  18. Hi Burk: You wrote: Ontological claims should be addressed by ontological professionals- i.e. scientists.

    Let me be the loudest to admit: I am quite dense a whole lot of the time. But I have to ask: why assume that all ontological claims are best addressed by scientists, or that claims not addressable by scientists are metaphors? It seems to me that there could be all kinds of ontological facts that couldn't even in principle be addressed by science. If you are saying that unless an ontological question can be answered by science [for example, does God exist] your belief [for example, that God exists] cannot have any epistemic warrant, I have to ask: why do you think that? If a person feels compelled by a particular answer to an ontological claim, and if a lot of what makes the claim ring true to him is the pragmatic benefit he derives from belief, why think that cannot provide him with epistemic warrant?

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  19. Hi Burk: I thought I posted this earlier but it vanished for some reason (I'm trying not to take it personally:-). So I'll ask my question quickly. You seem to be saying that the only epistemically valid way to address ontological questions is with science. Why think that?

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  20. Hi, Keith-

    I realize that, among philosophers, it is an unusual, if not revolutionary, claim that ontology is precisely the field that is dealt with in rigorous fashion by scientists. For some reason, Plato put it in metaphysics, even though reality (what exists) is a matter of actual physics and its offshoots like cosmology and theoretical physics. I am an amateur at ontology and philosophy in general, but it seems high time to make this point.

    Your question of .. does god exist .. is a case in point. You say that a person might "feel compelled" by such a claim. But why would such a feeling arise? Is it due to seeing god? Is it due to rigorous evidence for god- an extraordinary claim if there ever was one, needing extraordinary evidence? Or is it due to feelings engendered by your social situation in a church, by traditions imbuing scriptures and clergy with an aura of authority? Is it perhaps due to an interpretation of your feelings about the wonderfullness of the world and other warm feelings, projected onto traditional templates? Why do some feel compelled by entirely different gods, or by other world views altogether?

    My point is that ontology is precisely the place where rigor is most important, separating speculative fantasy from reasoned and evidenced knowledge. As you say, this is closely involved with epistemology, another area where science has a great deal of concrete experience.

    Is pragmatic benefit a form of evidence? I would suggest that by itself, it isn't. One can gain benefit from all kinds of false beliefs. The placebo effect is powerful, for one, even in physical terms, not to mention psychological benefits. Sheer confidence has always been one of the most powerful and beneficial traits, whether backed by goods or not. Human psychology is a complicated place, and gaining personal benefit from a belief doesn't seem to me to be a good way to go about epistemology.

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  21. Burk and Keith

    Some argue, I think, that science itself is based upon a sort of pragmatism. We embrace scientific knowledge precisely because doing so empowers us, allowing us to build ever more detailed and predictively precise models. The question that is then asked is, if we base science upon pragmatism, why is it a false move to extend that pragmatism to other ways of knowing?

    The answer I favour comes back to the difference between private and public knowledge. Science appears to be the process by which we establish knowledge upon which all can agree. (And here the definition of science becomes somewhat circular, it really is that collection of habits of mind that yield such results). Some may disagree upon the implications of these models, what they tells us about underlying reality, but few consistently bet against the pragmatic yield of its predictive power. We could make paupers of them soon enough if they chose to.

    So, in what I think is a highly significant regard, science is the only way we collectively approach ontological questions. We may choose to individually approach such questions in quite different ways, as for example in the arts, but at this point a certain humility comes into play. Aren't we forced to acknowledge that the value of our musings is an objective thing, to be picked up or rejected by others as they please?

    Bernard

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  22. Oops.

    Clearly in the last sentence I meant subjective.

    Bernard

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  23. Hi Burk:

    Thanks for your comments BTW. You bring up several possible reasons a person might feel compelled to believe in God (membership in a church, the tradition of accepting scripture as an authority, feeling the wonderfulness of the world etc.). Presumably you object that those reasons would not be epistemically valid reasons for believing. Maybe not. But what if the reason is similar to the reason a person might recognize the truth of logical principles; when they think about the universe it just seems obvious to them that there must have been a creator of that universe? When they think about life and love, right and wrong, it just seems obvious to them that there must be something like God behind all of that? You might ask why they feel that way, but an anti-logician might ask YOU the same thing about your belief in the law of non-contradiction. It seems to me you really couldn't say anything to the anti-logician, all you could say is "it seems clear to me". Of course there's a lot more agreement about basic principles of logic than there is about competing religious claims (although theism in general is fairly ubiquitous), but why should that matter? Questions, questions, that's mostly what I have. I look forward to your answers:-)

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  24. Hi Darrell

    I think yours was one of those that disappeared earlier so I've only just read it.

    You seem to hold two things simultaneously which I can't make work together. On the one hand, you hold we all agree on the facts (the sun is hot) and on the other, you hold that the distinction between facts and private beliefs is a false one.

    I entirely agree with you that when we interpret our set of facts, we are introducing private beliefs. none of us can progress without doing this. And I entirely agree that the challenge for any community is to turn these private beliefs into a workable sort of public understanding.

    Equally, it is an ongoing task to refine the process by which new facts are proposed, tested and accepted.

    But, given that there are these things called facts that we all agree upon, what is the objection to pointing out that they inhabit a unique ontological space? The statement 'god exists' is quite different in kind from 'my car is parked outside' and it seems to me that Burk, quite rightly, insists we acknowledge this difference.

    Why not do that?

    Bernard

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  25. Hi Keith

    This question of why is it all right to believe in logic when it's not all right to believe in God is often raised. I think there might be a good answer to it. For what it's worth, my solution is this:

    No system of knowledge can stand outside of itself, and so we always need a set of starting assumptions. The question is, which starting assumptions to choose? Because what we loosely think of as the scientific method (both formal and intuitive) has been successful in establishing a set of facts upon which all appear to agree (stand in front of a speeding train at your peril) then one good starting point might be the minimal set of assumptions required to make this programme work. Hence we embrace the rules of knowledge that underpin this demonstrable progress (inductive reasoning for example) as a matter of convenience.

    I think we should even go so far as to accept these logical rules are not global truths, but just convenient tools.

    The question then becomes, can a global belief in God yield any such demonstrable benefits? I accept it may yield private benefits, which is an excellent reason to embrace such concepts privately. But to insist the concept has truth beyond the personal metaphor appears to need a further step in the argument. I can't myself see what that might be.

    Bernard

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  26. Hi Darrell

    My comment has been wiped now, so you may not have read it. I won't repeat it now, but let me know perhaps if you saw it.

    Thanks

    Bernard

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  27. Hi Darrell

    I have a moment so I'll try again.

    I agree with you, when we move on past the facts we are all philosophers. Exactly so. This too is my point.

    And philosophy appears to be incapable itself of generating new facts. It can however offer new perspectives from which our facts are viewed, and this is tremendously important work.

    So no, absolutely I am not saying religion is subjective and other world views are objective. Neither is Burk. Rather, I am saying it is a mistake to state a personal belief, like God exists, or Winter's Bone is an excellent movie, as if these too are facts. The difference is that for this category of belief, there is no compelling reason why others should share our viewpoint.

    Eric's list which you quote makes this point well: 'because they are beautiful, because they resonate...' What you find beautiful, I may well find ugly, but the sun would burn us both.

    Bernard

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  28. Bernard,

    "...but at this point a certain humility comes into play. Aren't we forced to acknowledge that the value of our musings is an objective thing, to be picked up or rejected by others as they please?"

    Of course. And that is what some of us are doing as far as you and Burk's subjective musings. I don't see a problem. Now, a problem might be that you and Burk somehow think your musings are objective and universal.

    By the way, with the recent difficulties Eric mentioned with comments disappearing, I’m not sure if I have caught all the responses—if I have missed something please let me know.

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  29. Hi Burk: You suggest that because the scientific method has proved to be so successful (at providing us with a set of agreed upon facts), we might be justified in accepting the basic principles of logic as part of the minimal set of principles needed to make the scientific method function.

    But I have a question about this suggestion. Doesn't it PRESUPPOSE the validity of the basic principles of logic? It seems to me that your suggestion can be summed up as a syllogism:

    1. Among the essential principles of the scientific method is basic logic (premise).

    2. The scientific method has been ESISTEMICALLY SUCCESSFUL (i.e. successful at producing a set of facts nearly all people agree are true. (premise)

    3. IF a principle is essential to an epistemically successful method we are justified in accepting that principle (premise).

    4. Therefore we are justified in accepting basic logic.

    Symbolically this is of the form:

    1 & 2, IF [1 & 2] THEN 3, THERFORE 3.

    But the validity OF this argument depends on the validity of basic logic, so it seems to be circular reasoning. In fact, it seems to me that any attempt to EXPLAIN why basic logic is valid would suffer from circular reasoning. Similarly for trying to show that inductive reasoning is valid, as Bertrand Russell noted.

    I know my point is an old point, but it seems pretty strong to me. It seems to me that ultimately our acceptance of basic logic is just something that we do because it just seems right. For me, that's the same thing about God belief. More interesting (or challenging) to me is the question about why I find Christianity compelling (instead of Islam for example). But the God question comes logically first and I am not much of a multi-tasker:-)

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  30. Thanks to Eric for his thoughtful comments on my piece. Just in case anyone is curious: the essay is in God Matters, edited by Raymond Martin and Christopher Bernard. There are some related thoughts in the text that I wrote with Chris Bernard: A Thinkers' Guide to the Philosophy of Religion.

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  31. Hi Keith,

    I agree with you that there is a problem with the argument for accepting logic that you present above. However I think it is mistaken to look for a rational justification for science or logic. Although it may look this way after the fact, science does not assume that basic logic or induction are true. It is the other way around: science tentatively uses logic and induction (among other things) because they have proven effective in the past.

    Like other animals, we need to acquire accurate knowledge of our environment in order to survive. To do this, we observe, experiment, memorize, imagine, and so on. Science has evolved from these natural processes into the highly perfected and efficient set of tools and methods (plural) we have today. What works has been retained (logic and induction but also verification and experiment), what doesn't has been rejected (dreams, intuition, anecdotal evidence). Sources of error have been identified and methods have been developed to avoid them. We may say that the whole scientific enterprise is what humans do to acquire knowledge about reality.

    The justification for believing in science is simply that it works. How do we recognize that something works? I would say the same way we always do in our daily life. If I look outside my window, I see snow on the ground and I believe it's a true fact. Scientific facts share the same pragmatic nature.

    Are there other ways to acquire reliable knowledge? Possibly. And, if some method can be proven reliable, it would become part of the scientific toolkit – science is still evolving. Take knowledge gained by intuition, for instance. While it is often used in philosophical arguments, science has no use for this – simply because it has a terrible track record, not out of principle. But, if we learned how to use it reliably, science would no doubt use it too.

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  32. Bernard,

    “So no, absolutely I am not saying religion is subjective and other world views are objective. Neither is Burk. Rather, I am saying it is a mistake to state a personal belief, like God exists, or Winter's Bone is an excellent movie, as if these too are facts. The difference is that for this category of belief, there is no compelling reason why others should share our viewpoint.”

    I will let Burk speak for himself but I think he believes that his atheism and philosophical naturalism are objective and true in a way that belief in God is not. Putting that aside, do you also believe that it a mistake to state personal beliefs, like there is no God, or that the material is all there is, there is no transcendence, we are only chemistry, as if they too are facts?

    I agree with you that there are no compelling reasons for why others should share those viewpoints.

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  33. Hi, Keith-

    I agree that logic is justified, at base, through pragmatic means. But I don't think that therefore religion can likewise be justified by pragmatic means. The difference is the type of pragmatism at play.

    For science, pragmatism is proven out by empirical means- by the careful checking of theory, embodying logic (one hopes), with reality. Such things as careful observation, calibration, the creation of novel instruments, and the like all come into play. Also, humility in terms of proposing theories and regarding them as provisional until they have stood some kind of empirical test, due to an awareness of our tendency to be easily fooled by ourselves as well as others.

    For religion, pragmatism tends to amount to the proposition that X belief makes me feel good and makes me regard myself as a better person. It may also have absolutely tangible benefits like helping me kick alcohol or making my wife like me better. These are not to be sneezed at. They are pragmatic benefits. They may even extend to society as a whole. But they are all benefits of a psychological nature. They are not epistemologically sound if one is trying to establish, say, an ontology of cosmic reality. The are only sound in the sense that they indicate what makes (some) human beings psychologically happy and socially well-adjusted (though some religions are questionable in that department as well).

    This informs the question of which religion is better justified on such pragmatic grounds. Christianity has led to plenty of societal harm. I am just reading a (dreadful) history of the thirty year's war, which was in large part a contest between nascent Protestantism and revanchist Catholicism. Conversely, even the most benighted versions of Islam have their own concept of charitable activity on behalf of the poor, if not of the infidel. At any rate, I would be quite happy to grade religions on pragmatic grounds in terms of the good that they do for their societies and for others. Better religions (Buddhism, perhaps) should be given respect and used as resources for learning how to cultivate people to treat each other better.

    None of this justifies any particular view of cosmic ontology. That needs to be studied by looking directly at it. Trying to learn about such things by way of our psychological proclivities would be like studying astronomy by tarot cards.

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  34. Hi Darrell


    Absolutely I agree. To state 'there is no God' as a fact of the world suffers from exactly the same problem as stating 'there is a God' as a fact of the world. Both these points of views are embellishments we add in order to make sense of the facts, and ought to be treated as such.

    Which leads to agnosticism.

    Bernard

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  35. Hi Keith

    JP's description of the way science uses logic is a good one I think. The rules of reason become part of the tool kit, to be used in order to get the desired results.

    Maybe an interesting implication of this is the idea that the appropriate tools will vary depending upon the job. So, certain rules of logic are employed in a philosophical discussion that are not commonly applied in social discourse. Language also has its own rules of logic which must be employed by those using it to communicate. So, for any given situation we may employ the appropriate rules of reason simply because it is not obvious what the alternative would look like.

    Evolutionary factors are likely to have played a large part in making certain logical steps forced moves (How might a creature that reasoned non-inductively fare in the survival stakes one wonders?)

    Belief in God, by contrast, does not appear to be a forced move. One can manage perfectly well without it, so this might be another way of looking at the difference between the two beliefs?

    And finally, following this thread, we can think of situations where the turning off of reason is in fact helpful. Appreciating art comes to mind, where analysing can indeed lead us to 'murder to dissect'. And perhaps therefore religious belief can be seen in the same way art appreciation is, as both useful and unreasonable.

    Bernard

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  36. Hi Bernard,

    You are right to point out the possible dangers of unsubstantiated beliefs (religious or other). In the religious sphere, one can think of needed medical treatment prohibited by some religions (blood transfusion for instance).

    Going back to Paul's ontological claims, I find there is something very peculiar going on. The language used to state the claim is one of literal truth but Paul's behaviour seems inconsistent with this. It is more the attitude of someone having a strong attachment to an idea or a culture – something of the kind. In itself this does not prove anything, but I have a suspicion that this is significant. There is also the fact that the doctrine of transubstantiation is set in such terms as to prevent any meaningful investigation of the phenomenon. And this also is significant, I think.

    I don't find that religious beliefs come with the kind of curiosity and investigative spirit we normally associate with statements of facts. For example, intuition is often seen as a pathway to the transcendent, which implies a connection of some sort between the physical and the transcendent. Here, I'm not trying to resume the debate on the issue of “mechanisms” but I simply want to make this observation: the lack of interest in these questions (similar perhaps to Paul's attitude) does not seem consistent with the idea that these are factual claims about reality – that we could presumably investigate and understand better.

    I'm not sure at all what this means, if anything. But this is what we would expect if the literal truth of these beliefs was not so important after all, although maybe asserting their truths is? Very puzzling.

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  37. Hi J P:

    I guess it still seems to me that there's a logical problem with using induction to establish the validity of induction (I guess it also seems to me that you were doing such). I have to specify definitions to help me understand subtle ideas, so sorry if I am covering well tread ground here. But I understand it (at last in this context)induction means "the patterns that have been observed in the past can be properly expected to obtain in the future".
    You argued that because induction has worked in the past therefore we have a good reason to presume that it will work in the future. But isn't that argument itself an EXAMPLE of induction? If you don't start out assuming the future will relevantly resemble the past--if you don't assume induction--how do you go from induction seemed to work in the past, therefore we can legitimately assume it will work in the future?

    Or maybe you are not suggesting that experience justifies induction. Maybe you are just noticing the FACT that we end up accepting induction after having had those certain kinds of experiences.

    Or maybe something else:-)

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  38. Hi Keith,

    If you are saying that the value of induction, say, or logical rules of inference cannot be demonstrated rationally, then I agree. Any such demonstration would ultimately have to assume the truth of some unproven propositions. This is saying essentially that nothing can be established by logic alone. So, if the goal is to find a logical foundation/justification for science, I don't think it can be done.

    I suspect we need to look at this question as an evolutionary process. We are not using induction because it is logically sound or, strictly speaking, because it worked in the past. This is the other way around: because it worked in the past, we continued using it.

    I suppose we can see induction as closely related to memory. Now, why did our remote ancestors develop a nervous system that enabled them to memorize certain facts? No doubt because these memories gave some evolutionary advantage. Certainly, if we can remember where the water hole is, we run less risk of dying of thirst. At some later point, our ancestors started to anticipate, plan, predict. To do this, they needed to use some form of inductive process: the water hole is dangerous early in the day because these big nasty beasts come to drink, so we learn to go there at another time – induction successfully at work. And, precisely because these inductive processes worked (in the sense of giving a survival advantage) they stayed with us. One could say, I suppose, that we are made this way. Inductive machines survived and prospered. Induction becomes a forced move, to use Bernard's phrase.

    Here I am only speculating but I think this is roughly where the answer can be found.

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  39. Hi J P: I think there is much to recommend your idea that because induction worked in the past we continue using it. It seems to me that this just means that we tend to believe the patterns we will have experienced in the past will tend to obtain also in the future--we have a tendency toward inductive reasoning. I suppose that if our experiences were totally random, if there were no patterns at all to our experiences we wouldn't have have a tendency toward induction (or maybe our tendency would not be sustainable).

    But of course we (me at least) also have a tendency to trust it when something "rings true" to me--when I think about the existence of consciousness, of love, or right and wrong, for example, I find myself believing that God does exist. If my tendency to trust induction is epistemically respectable then it seems to me so is my tendency to trust my truth ringing sense wrt theism. And if respectability requires me to withhold belief in God unless I can verify the reliability of my truth ringing sense then it seems like I'd have to also refrain from trusting induction on the same grounds.

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  40. I've been pondering the whole truth ringing thing I mentioned in a reply to JP. I want to explore that a little more. It seems to me that necessarily I believe whatever it is that rings true to me. It also seems to me a mistake to suggest that we should in any sense refrain from believing those things that we cannot prove to other people. For one thing, even if I CAN'T provide a reason for other people to agree with me about a claim, still if rings true to me then I necessarily believe it. And even if I know other people don't see it the way I do, I don't see why that ought to induce me to disbelieve. I can see that it ought to inspire some degree of humility, but unless I generally trust my sense of truth ringing I don't see how I function epistemically at all.

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  41. Hi Keith

    The trouble with trusting the 'ring of truth' intuition too much might just be its poor track record. Often things that feel obvious (the flatness of the earth) turn out to be rather wrong.

    It seems to me it is harder to argue against the usefulness of induction. This is because the alternative, believing that things we have observed in the past do not have a bearing on the way the world will be in the future, is extremely hard to develop into a coherent belief system.

    So, there is a very good alternative to the 'ring of truth' approach; that of treating an untested hypothesis as open, examining it more closely, teasing out testable implications etc. By contrast there does not appear to be a very good alternative to inductive reasoning.

    It might also be important to consider that what rings true for one person very often does not ring true for another, so limiting the power of such intuitions to jump the gap from personal to public convictions.

    Bernard

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  42. Hi Keith,

    One way to look at the induction question is this: evolution has equipped us (and, to various degree, most other species of animals) with an “induction engine” that became perhaps our most important tool for acquiring knowledge about reality. Then, it is not so much that we trust induction than the fact that it's the one tool we have for the job. Conceivably, there could exist superhuman beings with the capacity to acquire knowledge directly without the need for our messy methods. But, for better or worse, we have to work with the tools at our disposal.

    As for intuition, “things ringing true”, the question is: how reliable is it? This is a question we know something about and, as Bernard points out, it has a poor track record. Intuition is in large part the result of training and experience. And even experts, after years and even decades of work and study, often find that their intuitions are wrong. If even in these ideal conditions intuition cannot be trusted, why would we believe it in areas about which we have no independent source of knowledge? Intuition is still tremendously useful as a source of new ideas, for example. Not much could be accomplished without it. But using it as an arbiter of truth does not see warranted at all.

    You say that you necessarily believe what rings true to you. Maybe you could elaborate on this because this is not my experience at all. That something rings true is certainly a good enough reason to investigate more or, in many practical matters, sufficient to make a decision – not everything needs to be ascertained to the same degree and intuition often provides a useful shortcut. But I don't find myself believing something simply because it feels right.

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  43. Hi JP and Bernard:

    Both of you make the point that the track record of truth ringing as an arbiter of truth is (allegedly) pretty poor. I think I could question that claim, but let's put that aside for now. Suppose I agree and thus don't trust my sense of truth ringing. In that case, it seems to me that I would be unable to evaluate any argument or any evidence at all. This is because (I claim) all recognition of truth IS subjectively an example of truth ringing. You show me a mountain of facts, and you offer what I find to be a persuasive explanation as to how those facts point to the truth of some claim of yours. I notice that given all those things, your claim rings true then I say to myself: sure this all seems true but given the dismal track record of truth ringing, I'd better stay uncommitted. This seems untenable.

    Now y'all might counter that truth ringing plus evidence has a good track record, but since my evaluation OF the evidence itself DEPENDS on truth ringing, I could then say that apparently truth ringing is more reliable than I thought, which would bolster the idea that I can trust truth ringing. Or so it seems to me:-)

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  44. Hi Keith

    Not sure about your notion of evaluation of evidence relying upon this truth ringing function. It may come down to definitions of truth ringing. Certainly any choice to believe anything does require one to say 'okay, I'll plump for that explanation' in some sense. But if that's our very broad definition of truth ringing, then we need to consider different types of such an intuition.

    So, when reaching an intuitive conclusion, I may choose to inform my intuition in a number of ways. By considering evidence, and assessing it according to the relationship between evidence and outcomes I am aware of in the past. By trusting authorities which themselves have a good track record of making such evidence based assessments. By applying rules of logic that I have come to trust over time, or that I have no choice but to apply. And so it goes on.

    This is in contrast I think to applying one's truth ringing sensors without regard for evidence. This approach, I contend, has a fairly lousy track record.

    That said, each to their own. Whatever gets you through the night. The key reason I don't like to believe something just because it feels right, is the knowledge that for somebody else the opposite conclusion may feel equally right. At this point, there appears to be no way of choosing between the competing intuitions. I'm not sure how one would accommodate that, beyond saying, 'when I say this thing is true, I mean only that it is true for me.'

    And at that point, you'll get no argument from me, because that seems an entirely reasonable way of believing in anything.

    Bernard

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  45. Hi Keith,

    You seem to argue for some form of relativism regarding truth in all its form. If you mean to say that there is no sound logical basis for believing, for example, in the value of evidence, you might be correct in the sense that logic (as it seems to me) cannot alone prove anything about reality. If, on the other hand, you’re saying that all propositions about reality are equally subjective, well, I’m not sure I want to go there.

    I tend to look at this in a very concrete, down to earth manner. And, here, it helps to consider how we approach ordinary questions of facts in our daily life. In this respect, we use (and trust) evidence all the time. If you want to watch a particular movie, you won't try to intuit where it is shown – you will go on the web and find out (evidence). If you need to go to a place you never went before, you might consult a map, or use a GPS. And so on.

    We’re no different from our remote ancestors, using observation and memory to determine, for example, when it was safe to go to the water hole. This is simply the way we acquire knowledge about our environment, the result of hundreds of millions of year of animal evolution. If it didn’t work, we wouldn’t be here to discuss it.

    This may look like a circular argument, using evidence that evidence works to accept evidence as reliable – some kind of chicken and egg problem. The latter question becomes tractable only from an evolutionary perspective – and then it becomes quite trivial. I think the same perspective must be used to understand how evidence came to be used as a reliable way to get knowledge.

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  46. Hi Bernard and JP:

    I do appreciate your taking the time to discuss this, and I hope my responses are responsive to the points you are making. Apparently this is too long so I'll have to split it into a couple of posts.

    1. I think I need to address the issue of how reliable the sense of "truth ringing" is. I think I AM using the expression in the broad way you suggest. I identify truth ringing phenomenologically--it's truth ringing anytime it feels to me like I have encountered the truth. I'm a math teacher and experience this "truth ringing" thing all the time. I experience it when I think about how the square root of two cannot be expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers--I have to reflect on the details of the proof, but when I do there is a sense that "this is really true" that comes with the reflection. That feeling IS the knowing that its true.

    Now of course I have also experienced that truth ringing and later on found out I was wrong--at least I had a new truth ring that told me so:-). So I know the feeling isn't infallible. But I haven't found personally that the experience tends to be unreliable. Now on some things the experience is more like "this seems to be reasonably likely to be true, but it could be false". But I don't see that the feeling is particularly unreliable.

    About the existence of God, the feeling is pretty strong. I think about the existence of consciousness, I think about the existence of right and wrong, even about the existence of abstract mathematical objects (math dude and all:-) and they seem quite inconsistent with a materialistic view of the world. Slightly less strong is my sense that God loves us. Now these things are not the kinds of things that one can find evidence for, at least not if we construe evidence the customary way. Which brings up a second point:

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  47. 2. I think basic logic is built into the very process of rational thinking. How we humans came to think rationally is a pretty interesting subject, but not IMO one that bears on whether or not rational thinking actually IS truth conducive. I take it for granted that it is, and I cannot imagine any kind of experience I could have that would lead to me rejecting logic itself as opposed to rejecting the premises of whatever syllogism I might be considering. And when I think about those basics of logic, they ring true to me. I think the same is true about the PROCESS of evidence evaluation. The idea that it is possible for me to discover facts by the process of evaluating evidence rings true to me. And since neither of those things are things that THEMSELVES are supportable by evidence--there could BE no evidence that either logic or evidence evaluation is not truth conducive--it must be epistemically respectable to at least in some circumstances to trust truth ringing even when there is no evidence for it. JP mentioned the kookiness of depending on intuition to find out movie times for the local theater--just look it up online. Agreed, but that's not the kind of thing I WOULD depend on intuition alone for. But it seems to me that whatever cannot be addressed by evidence AND still rings true to you, a cognitive rule against trusting truth ringing in those circumstances entails total crazy skepticism of everything.

    3. And one last point. Another place where I trust my sense of truth ringing is when I make moral judgments. I can't exactly prove my moral judgments to be correct, but I see no reason to distrust my conscience.


    4. OK, one MORE last point, mostly to JP. You took me to be arguing for a relativity of truth. But I don't think that at all. I believe that truth is universal--if X is true it's true for everybody. However I DO think our KNOWLEDGE of truth is necessarily subjective. Each of us has a sort of mental description of reality, that might be more or less accurate, is right or wrong at various different points. My description might differ from yours, and it might not be possible for us to come up with a way to ensure that our descriptions coincide. I don't think rationality obligates to eliminate from our descriptions any thing that we cannot agree on. It seems to me that the appropriate thing is for us to part as friends who just disagree.

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  48. 2. I think basic logic is built into the very process of rational thinking. How we humans came to think rationally is a pretty interesting subject, but not IMO one that bears on whether or not rational thinking actually IS truth conducive. I take it for granted that it is, and I cannot imagine any kind of experience I could have that would lead to me rejecting logic itself as opposed to rejecting the premises of whatever syllogism I might be considering. And when I think about those basics of logic, they ring true to me. I think the same is true about the PROCESS of evidence evaluation. The idea that it is possible for me to discover facts by the process of evaluating evidence rings true to me. And since neither of those things are things that THEMSELVES are supportable by evidence--there could BE no evidence that either logic or evidence evaluation is not truth conducive--it must be epistemically respectable to at least in some circumstances to trust truth ringing even when there is no evidence for it. JP mentioned the kookiness of depending on intuition to find out movie times for the local theater--just look it up online. Agreed, but that's not the kind of thing I WOULD depend on intuition alone for. But it seems to me that whatever cannot be addressed by evidence AND still rings true to you, a cognitive rule against trusting truth ringing in those circumstances entails total crazy skepticism of everything.

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  49. 3. And one last point. Another place where I trust my sense of truth ringing is when I make moral judgments. I can't exactly prove my moral judgments to be correct, but I see no reason to distrust my conscience.


    4. OK, one MORE last point, mostly to JP. You took me to be arguing for a relativity of truth. But I don't think that at all. I believe that truth is universal--if X is true it's true for everybody. However I DO think our KNOWLEDGE of truth is necessarily subjective. Each of us has a sort of mental description of reality, that might be more or less accurate, is right or wrong at various different points. My description might differ from yours, and it might not be possible for us to come up with a way to ensure that our descriptions coincide. I don't think rationality obligates to eliminate from our descriptions any thing that we cannot agree on. It seems to me that the appropriate thing is for us to part as friends who just disagree.

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  50. Thanks Keith

    It's an interesting discussion and I won't pretend to have all the answers. What's more, we probably agree on far more than we disagree on here, but the disagreement is the interesting bit, so:

    I suppose the big difference is that I do apply scepticism (at least when engaging in abstract philosophical discussions) pretty broadly. I don't think I can really claim to know anything is true. The best I can say is:

    Here is something that I believe, and believing it thus far has proven to be a very reliable guide to what will happen next, and what's more everybody else, when exposed to this belief, seems compelled to believe it too. Furthermore, the system of knowledge used to generate this belief turns out to be the most powerful generator of new knowledge we know of, so as well as believing in these facts, (tentatively) I will give my tentative allegiance to the method used to establish them.

    Now, using this method of enquiry brings me to a materialistic view of the world, in which intuition is itself open to study and dissection. Our intuitions develop over a life time, they are to a large extent learned, which is to say culture paints on biology's canvas. So I'm wary of treating intuition as some separate intellectual function, I suspect it's just the place where the subconscious activity bubbles up near the surface.

    Your last comment is very interesting. I agree. When two intuitions collide, a respectful disagreement is the way to go (once an open minded discussion of the whys and wherefores of the intuitions has taken place). I just like the idea of distinguishing beliefs that are in principle unresolvable from those that aren't.

    The second group it seems to me deserve the title facts, whereas the first category encapsulates artistic responses, religious beliefs and so forth. I go further and say we can't know anything about this first type of belief beyond what it means for us personally, but in a way this is nothing more than my linguistic preference.

    Bernard

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