I take no position on whether or not Thomas Merton was assassinated by the CIA. Some say he was. I neither affirm nor deny. I suspend judgment on a question about which I have no need to have an opinion. To investigate the matter properly would take me too far afield, and for no good reason. This is not to say that you may not have a good reason.
On some questions the prudent course is to suspend judgment. But not on all. On matters pertaining to one’s personal welfare in this life and beyond, it would be highly imprudent to take no position. For in those matters we have a stake in the outcome.
For example: Do we survive our bodily deaths as individual persons? The question is not merely theoretical. The intellectually honest answer is that no one knows. There are arguments on both sides, good arguments that cannot be dismissed out of hand. A good argument, as I use the phrase, needn’t be rationally coercive or philosophically dispositive. No one knows, but many are the beliefs. I take it for granted that belief, even reasoned belief, is not knowledge.
Suppose you exercise doxastic due diligence and dig deep into the mass of considerations for and against personal survival of death. Suppose the arguments cancel out, or seem to you to cancel out after the exercise of said diligence. Should you then suspend judgment and rest in doxastic equipoise? Not by my lights. That would be highly imprudent. It is here that “the will comes into it” as I like to say. What does that mean?
It means that you must decide what you will believe and thus how you will live and act. I won’t pause to explore the belief-action link except to say that what we truly believe is manifested in our actions, and that how we act shows what we truly believe. Why must you decide? Because no one knows the answer, and because it would be imprudent not to take a position on the question, assuming you care about your future well-being.
I have made two main points.
The first is that while suspension of judgment is permissible and often advisable, it is in some cases prudentially irrational. While it would be theoretically rational to suspend judgment on the survival question should the arguments pro et contra cancel out, it would not be prudentially rational. We are not disembodied transcendental spectators but ‘seated in life’ possessing as we do a Sitz im Leben in Wilhelm Dilthey’s phrase. Hence the rationality appropriate to our situated predicament cannot be mere theoretical rationality.
The second point follows from the first. Given that there are situations in which the reasons for and against cancel out, it would be prudentially irrational to suspend judgment.
Bill,
I have a perhaps naïve question regarding the nexus between belief and action and, specifically, your assertion that “what we truly believe is manifested in our actions, and that how we act shows what we truly believe.” What if someone cannot go beyond the suspension of belief on the big questions, such as the existence and survival of the soul, but out of prudence, motivated by, say, nothing more than fear, decides to live in a certain way? In this case, he lives “as if” something were true, without choosing. He continues to be epistemologically stymied, and his actions do not reflect his true beliefs but nothing more than cautiousness.
Vito
Vito,
If “he decides to live in a certain way,” then “he lives ‘as if’ something were true.” So far, so good. But then why do you say or imply that he does not choose? For that is exactly what he did: he decided or freely chose for prudential reasons to live as if his soul continues to exist after bodily death. He remains in a state of theoretical uncertainty, but his actions (living by the Ten Commandments, say) do reflect what he truly believes, namely, that survival, post-mortem judgment, etc. are real possibilities.
Note that if I truly believe that p, it does not follow that p is true. People all the time truly believe falsehoods (false propositions). In ‘truly believe,’ the ‘truly’ qualifies the believing, not the content of the belief.
Note also that if I act ‘as if’ p is true, it does not follow that p is not true. Of course, it does not follow that it is true either. If I act as if I will be judged after death, it does not follow that I will be judged after death. But neither does it follow that I won’t.
Thank you for this explanation, Bill. I think that I now understand your argument.
Vito
Vito,
Let’s consider a mundane example. A man at 60 does not know whether he will live ’til 90. Suppose the considerations pro et contra balance and thus ‘cancel out.’ From the POV of theoretical reason he should take no position and suspend judgment. But from the POV of prudential/practical reason, he should make sure that he has enough loot to last him ’til 90.
Bill,
This example is very helpful.
Although he frames the argument somewhat differently, am I right in thinking that Pascal was the first to grasp that “the rationality appropriate to our situated predicament cannot be mere theoretical rationality,” as in “Oui, mais il faut parier. Cela n’est pas volontaire, vous êtes embarqué.” For “embarqué,” onboard, is really what we are. The very fact that we exist makes taking a position on the Big Questions, including the existence of God, and living accordingly, non-optional.
Vito
https://perso.univ-rennes1.fr/stephane.leborgne/Pari-de-Pascal.pdf
“Yes, but one must wager. It is not voluntary, you are embarked.”
Was Pascal the first to propose the Wager or something like it? No. There are several anticipations, Arnobius of Sicca, for example:
>>In the only book of Arnobius to survive, Against The Pagans, he states his version of the God/eternity wager:
Since, then, the nature of the future is such that it cannot be grasped and comprehended by any anticipation, is it not more rational, of two things uncertain and hanging in doubtful suspense, rather to believe that which carries with it some hopes, than that which brings none at all? For in the one case there is no danger, if that which is said to be at hand should prove vain and groundless; in the other there is the greatest loss, even the loss of salvation, if, when the time has come, it be shown that there was nothing false in what was declared.<<
https://catholicstand.com/place-your-bets-the-arnobius-pascal-you-bet-your-life-wager/
On the Muslim side of the fence, al-Ghazali anticipated Pascal. He also anticipated Descartes in a different connection, but that is a different story.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1179/c17.1984.6.1.151
Vito,
What does “It is not voluntary” mean? Surely it is voluntary — a matter of my free will – whether I live a worldly life (the life of a Marquis de Sade, e.g.) or an unworldly life (that of a St. Augustine, e.g.) So I take Pascal to be saying that what is not voluntary is not deciding one way or the other. One has to decide. If someone were to object that he could avoid decision, simply abstain, commit himself neither way, suspend judgment, then I think Pascal’s reply would be: Not to decide IS to decide for a worldly life.
I think that is right. It’s a forced option, which is to say: we are not free not to decide. We cannot evade the decision. To evade it is to decide for a worldly life.
But the issue remains murky. Let’s try an analogy.
There are two kids of prepper, the this-side prepper and the far-side-prepper. The this-side prepper takes action in the present to avoid certain unwanted future outcomes, such as poverty, sickness, and social isolation. Suppose that in the present a person tries to evade the whole issue by choosing a dissolute modus vivendi: he does not save or invest, he abuses his body with drugs, alcohol, tobacco, extreme sports, poor diet, etc. , and he “multiplies enemies beyond necessity” (in one of my signature phrases). I would say that this fellow has not succeeded in evading the issuing, but has chosen a nasty future.
He failed to evade the this-side prep versus no-prep issue and ended up embracing (in a semi-conscious sort of way) the natural outcome of a non-prep lifestyle.
Analogously, one who tries to evade the far-side prep versus no-prep issue does not succeed: he ends up embracing (in a semi-conscious sort of way) an unwanted outcome (which might be missing out on ultimate felicity, or damnation, or extinction).
It seem to me that most people these days are betting on extinction, post-mortem.
This raises the question of how bad extinction would be.