Belief – Page 5 – Maverick Philosopher

Is ‘Justified Belief’ a Solecism?

Panayot Butchvarov, Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: Realism, Antirealism, Semirealism, Walter de Gruyter, 2015, p. 33:

As used in epistemology, "justified" is a technical term, of obscure meaning and uncertain reference, indeed often explicitly introduced as a primitive. In everyday talk, it is a deontic term, usually a synonym of 'just' or 'right,' and thus 'justified belief' is a solecism. For it is actions that are justified or unjustified, and beliefs are not actions.

The argument is this, assuming that moral justification is in question:

a. Actions alone are morally either justified or unjustified.
b. No belief is an action.
Therefore
c. No belief is morally either justified or unjustified.
Therefore
d. 'Morally justified belief' is a solecism.

(b) is not evident. Aren't some beliefs actions or at least analogous to actions? I will argue that some beliefs are actions because they come under the direct control of the will. As coming under the direct control of the will, they are morally evaluable.

1. It makes sense to apply deontological predicates to actions. Thus it makes sense to say of a voluntary action that it is obligatory or permissible or impermissible. But does it make sense to apply such predicates to beliefs and related propositional attitudes? If I withhold my assent to proposition p, does it make sense to say that the withholding is obligatory or permissible or impermissible? Suppose someone passes on a nasty unsubstantiated rumor concerning a mutual acquaintance. Is believing it impermissible? Is disbelieving it obligatory? Is suspending judgment required? Or is deontological evaluation simply out of place in a case like this?

Extreme doxastic voluntarism: ALL beliefs are such that their formation is under one's direct voluntary control.
Limited doxastic voluntarism: There are only SOME beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control.
Doxastic involuntarism: There are are NO beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control.

4. I am a limited doxastic voluntarist.

Kripke, Belief, Irrationality, and Contradiction

London Ed comments:

I also note a confusion that has been running through this discussion, about the meaning of ‘contradiction’. I do not mean to appeal to etymology or authority, but it’s important we agree on what we mean by it. On my understanding, a contradiction is not ‘the tallest girl in the class is 18’ and ‘the cleverest girl in the class is not 18’, even when the tallest girl is also the cleverest. Someone could easily believe both, without being irrational. The point of the Kripke puzzle is that Pierre seems to end up with an irrational belief. So it’s essential, as Kripke specifies, that he must correctly understand all the terms in both utterances, and that both utterances are logically contradictory, as in ‘Susan is 18’ and ‘Susan is not 18’.

Do we agree?

Well, let's see. The Maverick method enjoins the exposure of any inconsistent polyads that may be lurking in the vicinity. Sure enough, there is one:

An Inconsistent Triad

a. The tallest girl in the class is the cleverest girl in the class.
b. The tallest girl in the class is 18.
c. The cleverest girl in the class is not 18.

This trio is logically inconsistent in the sense that it is not logically possible that all three propositions be true. But if we consider only the second two limbs, there is no logical inconsistency: it is possible that (b) and (c) both be true. And so someone, Tom for example, who believes that (b) and also believes that (c) cannot be convicted of irrationality, at least not on this score. For all Tom knows — assuming that he does not know that (a) — they could both be true: it is epistemically possible that both be true. This is the case even if in fact (a) is true. But we can say more: it is metaphysically possible that both be true. For (a), if true, is contingently true, which implies that it is is possible that it be false.

By contrast, if Tom entertains together, in the synthetic unity of one consciousness, the propositions expressed by 'Susan is 18 years old' and 'Susan is not 18 years old,' and if Tom is rational, then he will see that the two propositions are logical contradictories of each other, and it will not be epistemically possible for him that both be true. If he nonetheless accepts both, then we have a good reason to convict him of being irrational, in this instance at least.

Given the truth of (a), (b) and (c) cannot both be true and cannot both be false. This suggests that the pair consisting of (b) and (c) is a pair of logical contradictories. But then we would have to say that the contradictoriness of the pair rests on a contingent presupposition, namely, the truth of (a). London Ed will presumably reject this. I expect he would say that the logical contradictoriness of a pair of propositions cannot rest on any contingent presupposition, or on any presupposition at all. Thus

d. Susan is 18

and

e. Susan is not 18

form a contradictory pair the contradictoriness of which rests on their internal logical form — Fa, ~Fa — and not on anything external to the propositions in question.

So what should we say? If Tom believes both (b) and (c), does he have contradictory beliefs? Or not?

The London answer is No! The belief-contents are not formally contradictory even though, given the truth of (a), the contents are such that they cannot both be true and cannot both be false. And because the belief-contents are not formally contradictory, the beliefs themselves — where a belief involves both an occurrent or dispositional state of a person and a belief-content towards which the person takes up a propositional attitude — are in no theoretically useful sense logically contradictory.

The Phoenix answer suggestion is that, because we are dealing with the beliefs of a concrete believer embedded in the actual world, there is sense to the notion that Tom's beliefs are contradictory in the sense that their contents are logically contradictory given the actual-world truth of (a). After all, if Susan is the tallest and cleverest girl, and the beliefs in question are irreducibly de re, then Tom believes, of Susan, that she is both 18 and not 18, even if Tom can gain epistemic access to her only via definition descriptions. That belief is de re, irreducibly, is entailed by (SUB), to which Kripke apparently subscribes:

SUB: Proper names are everywhere intersubstitutable salva veritate.

A Second Question

If, at the same time, Peter believes that Paderewski is musical and Peter believes that Paderewski is not musical, does it follow that Peter believes that (Paderewski is musical and Paderewski is not musical)? Could this conceivably be a non sequitur? Compare the following modal principle:

MP: If possibly p and possibly ~p, it does not follow that possibly (p & ~p).

For example, I am now seated, so it is possible that I now be seated; but it is also possible that I now not be seated, where all three occurrences/tokens of 'now' rigidly designate the same time. But surely it doesn't follow that it is possible that (I am now seated and I am now not seated). Is it perhaps conceivable that

BP: If it is believed by S that p and it is believed by S that ~p, it does not follow that it is believed by S that (p & ~p)?

Has anybody ever discussed this suggestion, even if only to dismiss it?

What Exactly is Kripke’s Puzzle About Belief?

I will try to explain it as clearly and succinctly as I can. I will explain the simplest version of the puzzle, the 'monoglot' version. We shall cleave to English as to our dear mother.

The puzzle is generated by the collision of two principles, one concerning reference, the other concerning disquotation. Call them MILL and DISQ.

MILL: The reference of a proper name is direct: not routed through sense as in Frege. The meaning of a name is exhausted by its reference. The semantic value of a name is just the object to which it refers. (Gareth Evans plausibly recommends 'semantic value' as the best translation of Frege's Bedeutung.)

DISQ: If a normal English speaker S sincerely assents, upon reflection, to 'p,' and 'p' is a sentence in English free of indexical elements, pronominal devices, and ambiguities, then S believes that p.

The puzzle is interesting, and not easily solved, because there are good reasons for accepting both principles. The puzzle is puzzling because the collision of the two principles takes the form of a flat-out logical contradiction.

And as we all know, philosophers, while they love paradoxes, hate contradictions.

(DISQ) strikes this philosopher as a principle than which no more luminous can be conceived. How could one who is competent in English and familiar with current events sincerely and reflectively assent to 'Hillary is a liar' and not believe that Hillary is a liar? The intellectual luminosity of (MILL), however, leaves something to be desired. And yet it is plausible, and to many experts, extremely plausible. Brevity being the soul of blog, I cannot now trot out the arguments in support of (MILL).

The collision of (MILL) and (DISQ) occurs at the intersection of Mind and World. It comes about like this. S may assent to

a. Cicero was a Roman

while failing to assent to

b. Tully was a Roman

even though

c. Cicero = Tully.

Given (DISQ), S believes that Cicero was a Roman, but may or may not believe that Tully was a Roman. But how is this possible given the truth of (c)? Given (c), there is no semantic difference between (a) and (b): the predicates are the same, and the names are semantically the same under (MILL). For on the latter principle, the meaning of a name is its referent. So sameness of referent entails sameness of meaning, which is to say: the semantic content of (a) and (b) is the same given the truth of (c).

How can S believe that Cicero was a Roman while neither believing nor disbelieving that Tully was a Roman when the sentences express the very same proposition? This is (an instance of) the puzzle. Here is another form of it. Suppose S assents to (a) but also assents to

d. Tully was not a Roman.

On (DISQ), S believes that Tully is not a Roman. So S believes both that Cicero was a Roman and that Tully was not a Roman. But Cicero = Tully. Therefore, S believes that Cicero was a Roman and S believes that Cicero was not a Roman. This certainly looks like a contradiction.

It seems that our governing principles, (MILL) and (DISQ), when applied to an ordinary example, generate a contradiction, the worst sort of intellectual collision one can have.

The Paderewski case is similar. On different occasions, Peter assents to 'Paderewski is musical' and 'Paderewski is not musical.' He has no qualms about assenting to both since he supposes that this is a case of two men with the same name. But in reality he is referring to one and the same man. By (DISQ), Peter believes both that Paderewski is musical and that Paderewski is not musical. Given (MILL), Peter believes contradictory propositions. How is this possible given that Peter is rational?

Given the luminosity of (DISQ), one might think the solution to Kripke's puzzle about belief is simply to jettison (MILL).

Not so fast. There are powerful arguments for (MILL).

Background for a Discussion of Kripke’s “A Puzzle About Belief”

London Ed wants to discuss the Paderewski example in Saul Kripke's "A Puzzle About Belief." But before doing so we should see if we agree on some preliminary points. Knowing Ed, he will probably find a way to disagree with a good chunk what I am about to say. So I expect we will get bogged down in preliminaries and never proceed to Paderewski. We shall see. Kripke references are to Philosophical Troubles, Oxford 2011.

Belief de re and belief de dicto

Kripke makes it clear that he is concerned only with belief de dicto in the paper in question (128). So we need to understand the restriction. The following I take to be constructions expressive of belief de re.

Cicero is believed by Tom to be a Roman
Cicero is believed to be a Roman by Tom
Cicero is such that Tom believes him to be a Roman
Tom believes, of Cicero, that he is a Roman

De re means: of or pertaining to the res, the thing, where 'of' is an objective genitive. De dicto means: of or pertaining to the dictum, that which is said (dico, dicere, dixi, dictum), where the 'of' is again an objective genitive. A dictum is the content of an assertive utterance. It is a proposition, what Frege called a thought (ein Gedanke), not a thinking, but the accusative of a thinking. I am not assuming a Fregean as opposed to a Russellian theory of propositions. But we do need to speak of propositions. And Kripke does. For the time being we can say that propositions are the objects/accusatives/contents of such propositional attitudes as belief. Of course they have other roles to play as well.

What makes the above sentences de re is that they ascribe a property to Cicero as he is in himself, and not as he appears before the mind of Tom. Or at least that is the way I would put it. Because of this the following argument is valid:

Cicero is believed by Tom to be a Roman
Cicero = Tully
Ergo
Tully is believed by Tom to be a Roman.

The presiding principle is the Indiscernibility of Identicals: if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and vice versa. So if Cicero = Tully, and the former is believed by Tom to be a Roman, then Tully is also believed by Tom to be a Roman. This is so even if Tom has never heard of Tully, or has heard of him but has no opinion as to his identity or non-identity with Cicero. But the following argument, whose initial premise is expressive of belief de dicto, is invalid:

Tom believes that: Cicero is a Roman.
Cicero = Tully
Ergo
Tom believes that: Tully is a Roman.

The conclusion does not follow in the de dicto case because (i) Tom may never have heard of Tully and neither believes nor disbelieves anything about him, (ii) or Tom has heard of Tully but has no opinion about his identity or non-identity with Cicero. What this example suggests is that codesignative singular terms are not everywhere intersubstitutable salva veritate. The Latin phrase means: in a truth-preserving manner. De dicto belief contexts are thus contexts in which intersubstitutability of coreferential names appears to fail. Thus if we substitute 'Tully' for 'Cicero' in the initial premise, we turn a truth into a falsehood despite the fact that the two names refer to the same man.

What this suggests, in turn, is that there is more to the semantics of a proper name than its reference. It suggests that names have both sense and reference. It suggests that what Tom has before his mind, the proposition toward which he takes up the propositional attitude of belief, does not have as subject-constituent Cicero himself, warts and all, but a mode of presentation (Frege: Darstellungsweise) of the man himself, a sense (Sinn) that determines the reference to the man himself.

Before proceeding, we note the difference between the de re

There is someone Tom believes to be a faithful husband

and the de dicto

Tom believes that: there are faithful husbands.

The first entails the second, but the second does not entail the first. For if one believes that there are faithful husbands, one needn't believe, of any particular man, that he is a faithful husband. What one believes is that some man or other is a faithful husband. Tom: "I'm sure there are faithful husbands; I just can't name one."

A problem for a Millian theory of proper names

Kripke tells us that on a "strict Millian view . . . the linguistic function of a proper name is completely exhausted by the fact that it names its bearer . . . ." (127) Whether or not this is the view of the historical J. S. Mill is of no present concern. The Millian view contrasts with the Fregean view according to which names have reference-determining senses. The problem posed for Millian names by de dicto belief may be set forth as an aporetic tetrad:

a. There is no semantic difference between codesignative Millian proper names.
b. If (a), then 'a is F' and 'b is F' express the same proposition where 'a' and 'b' are both Millian and codesignative.
c. A person who believes a proposition cannot doubt or disbelieve that same proposition.
d. There are countless cases in which a person believes a proposition of the form a is F while doubting or disbelieving a proposition of the form b is F even when a = b.

This foursome is clearly inconsistent. But each of the limbs, with the exception of the first, is extremely plausible if not undeniable. So the natural solution is to jettison (a) and with it Millian semantics for proper names. But this is what the Millian Kripke is loath to do. He has already convinced himself that ordinary proper names are rigid designators whose designation does not depend on reference-determining senses.

Do Christians and Muslims Believe in the Same God? Francis Beckwith and the Kalam Cosmological Argument

Francis Beckwith mentions the Kalam Cosmological Argument in his latest The Catholic Thing article (7 January 2106):

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

Suppose that a Muslim and Christian come to believe that God exists on the basis of this Kalam argument and such ancillary philosophical arguments and considerations as are necessary to establish that the cause of the universe is uncreated, transcendent of the universe, unchanging, etc. The result is a conception of God achieved by reason without the aid of divine revelation. It is a conception common to the normative Muslim and the normative Christian. Crucial differences emerge when the core conception is fleshed out in competing ways by the competing (putative) revelations. But if we stick with the core philosophical conception, then all should agree that there is important overlap as between the Christian and Muslim God conceptions. The overlap is achieved by abstraction from the differences.

So far so good.

Beckwith then asks whether the Muslim and the Christian "believe in the same God" and he concludes that they do.

Permit me a quibble. 'Believe in' connotes 'trust in, have faith in, rely upon the utterances of,' and so on. I believe in my wife: I trust her, I am convinced of her fidelity. That goes well beyond believing that she exists. If I believe in a person, it follows that I believe that the person exists. But if I believe that a person exists, it does not follow that I believe in the person. Professor Beckwith is of course aware of this distinction.

At best, then, what the Christian and the Muslim are brought to by the Kalam argument and supplementary considerations is not belief in God, but belief that God exists. To be even more precise, the Kalam argument, at best, brings us to the belief that there exists a unique, transcendent, uncreated (etc.) cause of the beginning of the universe. In other words, both Christian and Muslim are brought to the belief and perhaps even the knowledge that a certain definite description is satisfied. The properties mentioned in this description are what constitute the shared philosophical understanding of 'God' by the Muslim and the Christian. At best, philosophy brings us to knowledge of God by description, not a knowledge by acquaintance. The common description is usefully thought of as a 'job description' inasmuch as God in brought in to do a certain explanatory job, that of explaining the beginning of the universe. As my teacher J. N. Findlay once said, "God has his uses."

But note that this common Christian-Muslim description leaves undetermined many properties an existent God must possess. (And it must be so given the finitude of our discursive, ectypal, intellects.) But in reality, outside the mind and outside language, God, like everything else, is completely determinate, or complete, for short. I am assuming the following existence entails completeness principle of general metaphysics (metaphysica generalis).

EX –>COMP: Necessarily, for any existent x, and for any non-intentional property P, either x instantiates P or x instantiates the complement of P.

What the principle states is that every real item, everything that exists, satisfies the property version of the Law of Excluded Middle. It rules out of reality incomplete objects. For example, God in reality is either triune or non-triune. He cannot be neither, any more than I can be neither a blogger nor not a blogger. The definite description(s) by means of which we have knowledge by description of God, however, are NECESSARILY (due to the finitude of our intellects) such that there are properties of God in reality that these descriptions do not mention. This is of course true of knowledge by description of everything. Everything is such that no description manageable by a finite mind makes mention of all of the thing's properties, intrinsic and relational.

Now suppose that Christianity is true and that God in reality is triune. Then the above common definite description is satisfied. The common Muslim-Christian conception is instantiated — but it is instantiated by the Christian God which of course must exist to instantiate it.

The Christian and the Muslim both believe that God (understood as the unique uncreated creator of the universe) exists. That is: they believe that the common conception of God is instantiated, that the common definite description is satisfied. They furthermore believe that the common conception is uniquely instantiated and that the common description is uniquely satisfied. But they differ as to whether the instantiator/satisfier is the triune God or the non-triune God.

So we can answer our question as follows. The question, recall, is: Do Christians and Muslims believe in the same God?

Muslims and Christians believe in the same God, as Beckwith claims, in the following precise sense: they believe that the same God exists, which is to say: they believe that the common philosophical God concept is uniquely instantiated, instantiated by exactly one being. Call this the anemic sense of believing in the same God.

But this is consistent with saying that Muslim and Christian do not believe in the same God in the following precise sense: they don't believe that the wholly determinate being in reality that instantiates the common philosophical God concept is the triune God who sent his only begotten Son, etc. Call this the robust sense of believing in the same God.

Now we robustos will naturally go with the robust sense. So, to give a plain answer: Christians and Muslims do not believe in the same God. If Christianity is true, the Muslim God simply does not exist, and Muslims believe in an idol.

The mistake that some are making here is to suppose that the shared Muslim-Christian philosophical understanding enscapsulated in the common concept suffices to show that in reality one and the same God is believed in, and successfully referred to, and non-idolatrously worshipped by both Muslims and Christians. Not so!

The real (extramental, extralinguistic) existence of God cannot be identified with or reduced to the being instantiated of a concept that includes only some of the divine determinations (properties). 'Is instantiated' is a second-level predicate, but God exists in the first-level way. Equivalently, God is not identical to an instance of one of our concepts. God is transcendent of all our concepts. So if we know by revelation that God is a Trinity, then we know that the Muslim God, the non-triune God, does not exist.

Alles klar?

Why Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God

Doubt and Belief

Doubting no more confers dubitability upon that which is doubted than believing confers credibility upon that which is believed.

Evidence and Actuality: A Modal Punch at W. K. Clifford

W. K. Clifford is often quoted for his asseveration that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Now one of my firmest beliefs is that I am an actual individual, not a merely possible individual. A second is my belief that while there is an infinity of possible worlds, there is exactly one actual world and that this world of me and my world mates is the world that happens to be actual. (Think of the actual world as the total way things are, and of a merely possible world as a total way things might have been. For a quick and dirty primer, see Some Theses on Possible Worlds.)

But not only do I have insufficient evidence for these two beliefs, it looks as if I have no evidence at all. And yet I feel wholly entitled to my acceptance of them and in breach of no plausible ethics of belief, assuming there is such a subject as the ethics of belief.

Consider the following argument that I adapt from D. M. Armstrong, who borrowed it from Donald C. Williams:

1. Exactly one of the infinity of possible worlds is actual.

2. This world of me and my mates is a possible world.

Therefore, very probably,

3. This world of me and my mates is merely possible.

This is an inductive argument, but a very strong one. While it does not necessitate its conclusion, it renders the conclusion exceedingly likely. For if there is an infinity of worlds, how likely is it that mine is the lucky one?

And yet the conclusion is absurd, or to be precise: manifestly false. Is it not perfectly obvious that this world of ours and everything in it is actual? I am convinced that I am actual, and that all this stuff I am interacting with is actual. I am sitting in an actual chair in an actual room which is lit by an actual sun, etc.

But how do I know this? What is my evidence? There are no facts known to me that are better known than the fact that I am actual (that I actually exist). So my evidence cannot consist of other facts. Is it self-evident that I am actual? You could say this, but how do I know, given the above argument, that my actuality is objectively self-evident as opposed to merely subjectively self-evident? Subjective self-evidence is epistemically worthless, while objective self-evidence is not to be had in the teeth of the above argument. No doubt I seem to myself to be actual. But that subjective seeming does not get the length of objective self-evidence. I now argue as follows:

4. If it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence, then it is wrong to believe anything on no evidence.

5. I have no evidence that me and my world are actual.

6. It is not wrong to believe what is obviously true.

7. It is obviously true that I am actual.

Therefore, contra Clifford,

8. There are some things it is not wrong to believe on insufficient evidence.

This is not a compelling argument, but it is a very powerful one. Not compelling because the Cliffordian extremist could bite the bullet by denying (7). He might say that the ethics of belief enjoins us to suspend belief on the question whether one is actual.

Now this is psychologically impossible, for me anyway. But apart from this impossibility, it is surely better known that I am actual than that Clifford's extreme thesis is true.

There are other obvious problems with the thesis. Any tyro in philosophy should see right away that it is self-vitiating. If it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence, then it is wrong to believe Clifford's thesis on insufficient evidence. But what conceivable evidence could one have for it? None that I can see. It is not only a normative claim, but one stuffed with universal quantifiers. Good luck! If you say that the thesis needn't be taken as applying to itself, then other problems will arise that you can work out for yourself. Why do I have to do all the thinking?

Note also that if you take Clifford's thesis to heart you will have to suspend belief on all sorts of questions outside of religion, questions in ethics, politics, economics, climatology, etc., questions you have extremely firm opinions about. The practical upshot, if one were consistent, would probably be a full retreat into Skeptic ataraxia. At least until the political authorities came to put you in prison. Then you would begin believing that some things are just and some are not, etc., and damn the insufficiency or nonexistence of the evidence for the contentious beliefs.

Our doxastic predicament is a bitch, ain't she? Well, what do you want for a Cave?

On Indoctrination

Is indoctrination ever a good thing?

Presumably, to indoctrinate is to teach one doctrine as if it is true, as opposed to presenting a variety of different doctrines on the same topic without endorsing any one of them. In general, indoctrination ought not be done at the college level: Competing positions should be presented fairly and objectively and students should be encouraged to think matters through themselves and form their own opinions. But this point demands careful qualification.

For surely indoctrination is legitimate in some subjects such as mathematics and the hard sciences. No one could fault a math or science teacher for failing to give equal time to the views of numerologists, alchemists, astrologists, flat earthers and geocentrists. And in political science classes short shrift should be given to 9-11 'truthers' and other conspiracy enthusiasts. Their views may be discussed in passing, but to present them as if such theories are serious contenders in the arena of ideas makes a mockery of the search for truth, which presumably is what universities ought to be about. Certain views are beyond the pale and ought not be dignified by being taken seriously, e.g., Holocaust denial, the allegations made in the protocols of the Elders of Zion, the views of NAMBLA members, and so on.

But even in philosophy some indoctrination could well be justified, in logic, for example. One is justified in teaching introductory standard logic dogmatically without bringing in Hegelian and Marxist and dialetheist critiques of the law of non-contradiction, say. But not only in logic. To borrow an epithet from Arthur Collins, eliminative materialism is a 'lunatic" philosophy of mind. I would cover it in a philosophy of mind course, but I would not present it as a possible view that one might justifiably hold; I would present it as not merely false but as incoherent. And I would take myself to be justified in doing so. Of course, I would present the doctrine and the arguments thought to support it accurately; but I would not present it as if it were one epistemically possible view among others. So in that sense I would be engaged in legitimate indoctrination: if not by the promotion of the true view, at least by the rejection of false or incoherent ones.

If one were to oppose all indoctrination, then one would have to present every extant view on every issue as if it had a legitimate claim on our attention. But this would encourage the view in students that all views are equally good, which is obviously not the case. For example, in the philosophy of mind, eliminative materialism, behaviorism, and type-type identity theory are all very bad theories with eliminativism being the worst and the identity theory being the best of the three. But nothing hinges on this example. I could give many from different areas of philosophy. The point is that a pedagogic posture of studied neutrality with respect to every view is as bad as an extreme doctrinalism in which contentious positions are tendentiously promoted.

One can see from these sketchy remarks that the issue is not easily sorted out. Teaching that promotes relativism and skepticism, that leaves the student with the notion that all views are equally good or that nothing can be known is bad teaching. Equally bad is teaching that merely foists opinions on students without inculcating habits of critical thought or without fairly presenting the debates surrounding reasonably debatable issues. (Not all issues, however, are reasonably debatable.) Navigating between the Scylla of of the one and the Charybdis of the other is no easy task.

Life Without Views

Could one live well without views, 'long' views? I address the question in Long Views and Short Views: Is Shorter Better?

Decision and Conclusion

How much of decision is included in every conclusion? Did you conclude that there is no God or decide that there is no God? Some of both? Which then is the major player here, reason or will?

Dolezal, Knowledge, and Belief

R. C. writes,

I hadn't heard of the Dolezal case until reading your blog post. It occurred to me that this case might serve as a counterexample to the standard epistemological position that belief is necessary for knowledge.

I don't know Dolezal's psychological/epistemic state. But suppose she knows that she isn't African-American by race, but she has convinced herself to believe she is so. Would she have knowledge without belief?

Perhaps yes. Or perhaps she doesn't really believe she is African-American by race. Or, perhaps she is double minded: one mind knows and thus believes she isn't, and the other lacks knowledge on the matter but believes she is.

Anyway, I'd be interested in your take.

As I construe his example, the loyal reader is offering a case in which a subject knows that p without believing that p. Thus he is supposing that Dolezal knows that she is Caucasian, but does not believe that she is. If so, we have a counterexample to the standard view that, necessarily, if S knows that p, then S believes that p. On the standard analysis, believing that p is necessary for knowing that p. What the example suggests is that believing that p is not necessary for knowing that p.

We should distinguish between a weaker and a stronger thesis:

1. It is not the case that knowledge entails belief. (Some cases of knowledge are not cases of belief.)

2. Knowledge entails disbelief. (No cases of knowledge are cases of belief.)

I read the following passage from Dallas Willard as supporting (1):

Belief I understand to be some degree of readiness to act as if such and such (the content believed) were the case. Everyone concedes that one can believe where one does not know. But it is now widely assumed that you cannot know what you do not believe. Hence the well known analysis of knowledge as "justified, true belief." But this seems to me, as it has to numerous others, to be a mistake. Belief is, as Hume correctly held, a passion. It is something that happens to us. Thought, observation and testing, even knowledge itself, can be sources of belief, and indeed should be. But one may actually know (dispositionally, occurrently) without believing what one knows.

Whether or not one believes what one represents truly and has an appropriate basis for so representing, depends on factors that are irrelevant to truth, understanding and evidence. It depends, one might simply say, on how rational one is. Now I do not think that this point about belief in relation to knowledge is essential to the rest of this paper, but I mention it to indicate that the absence of any reference to belief in my general description of knowledge is not an oversight. Belief is not, I think, a necessary component of knowledge, though one would like to believe that knowledge would have some influence upon belief, and no doubt it often does.

Now we can't get into Dolezal's (crazy) head, but the following is plausibly ascribed to her. She knows who her biological parents are; she knows that they are both Caucasian; she knows that Caucasian parents have Caucasian children; hence she knows that she is biologically Caucasian. Could she nonetheless really believe that she is not Caucasian?

Perhaps. Belief is tied to action. It is tied to what one does and leaves undone and what one is disposed to do and leave undone. Dolezal's NAACP activities and her verbal avowals among other behaviors suggest that she really believes that she is racially black.

But if Dolezal really believes that she is racially black, when she knows that she is racially white, then she is irrational. Why not say the following by way of breaking the link between belief and knowledge:

D1. S knows that p =_df S justifiably accepts that p, and p is true.

D2. S believes that p =_df S accepts that p and S either acts as if p is true or is prepared to act as if p is true.

These definitions allow that there are cases of knowledge that are not cases of belief without excluding cases of knowledge that are cases of belief. What is common to knowledge and belief is not belief, but acceptance.

Do You Think Your Views Will Ever Change?

The question was put to atheist A. C. Grayling. His response:

No, my views will not change; I am confident in the rationalist tradition which has evaluated the metaphysical and ethical claims of non-naturalistic theories, and definitively shown them to be vacuous in all respects other than the psychological effect they have on those credulous enough to accept them.

Vacuous? Grayling is quite the gasbag.

Plantinga Reviews Philip Kitcher, Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism

Here.

The wild diversity of religious doctrines suggests to Kitcher that they are all almost certainly false. Plantinga makes an interesting response:

But even for whole systems: there is certainly wide variety here, but how does it follow that they are all almost certainly false? Or even that any particular one is almost false? Kitcher's book is an exercise in philosophy. The variety of philosophical belief rivals that of religion: there are Platonists, nominalists, Aristotelians, Thomists, pragmatists, naturalists, theists, continental philosophers, existentialists, analytic philosophers (who also come in many varieties), and many other philosophical positions. Should we conclude that philosophical positions, including Kitcher's low opinion of religious belief, are all almost certainly false? I should think not. But then wouldn't the same be true for religious beliefs? The fact that others hold religious opinions incompatible with mine is not a good reason, just in itself, for supposing my beliefs false. After all, if I were to suppose my views false, I would once more be in the very same position: there would be very many others who held views incompatible with mine.

To put it my own way: a philosopher discrediting religion on the ground of doctrinal diversity is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Philosophers notoriously contradict one another on anything and everything. Everything is up for grabs. What then gives philosophy the right to judge religion?

Against Historical Relativism: Adorno on What is No Longer Believable After Auschwitz

Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno is exasperating but exciting. Although as sloppy as one expects Continental thinkers to be, he is nonetheless a force to be reckoned with, a serious man who is seriously grappling with ultimates at the outer limits of intelligibility. Derrida I dismiss as a bullshitter; indeed, to cop a line from John Searle, he is someone who "gives bullshit a bad name." But I can't dismiss Adorno. I confess to being partial to the Germans. They are nothing if not serious, and I'm a serious man. Among the French there is an excess of façade and frippery. But now let's get to work — like good Germans.

Suppose we focus on just part of one of Adorno's serpentine sentences. This is from Negative Dialektik (Suhrkamp, p. 354):

Dass das Unveraenderliche Wahrheit sei und das Bewegte, Vergaengliche Schein, die Gleichgueltigkeit von Zeitlichem und ewigen Ideen gegeneinander, ist nicht laenger zu behaupten . . . .

Adorno is telling us that

It can no longer be asserted that the true is the unchangeable while the mobile and mutable is mere appearance, or that eternal Ideas and the temporal realm are indifferent to each other . . . .

So what is our man saying? He is saying that after Auschwitz — where 'Auschwitz' collects all the genocidal and totalitarian horrors of the Third Reich — one can no longer take Platonism seriously, or the people's Platonism either, Christianity. And indeed most traditional philosophy, consisting as it does, in Whitehead's phrase, of a series of footnotes to Plato. The old metaphysics is dead, the metaphysics according to which Being itself has a positive and hence affirmable character. An experience has refuted the old metaphysics, the experience of Auschwitz.

But if it can no longer be asserted that that the true is the immutable, then it once could be asserted. And indeed, by 'assert' is intended assert with truth or at least justification. Note the ambiguity of 'assertible' as between capable of being asserted and worth of being asserted. And make a meta-note of how a broadly analytic thinker like me pedantically points out something like this whereas your typical Continental head would find my procedure boorish or somehow gauche. "How low class of you to be so careful and precise!"

But I digress. My point, again, is that if a proposition can no longer be asserted and believed, then it once could be asserted and believed. But if a metaphysical proposition was once true or believed with justification, then it is now true or believable with justification. For a metaphysical assertion is necessarily true if true at all. The structure of being cannot be contingent upon our contingent experiences, even experiences as shattering as that of the Nazi horror. (It is telling of course that Adorno, good man of the Left that he is, does not mention the Stalinist horrors which were known since 1956 — but that is a separate post.)

What I am objecting to is Adorno's apparent historical relativism. By this I mean the view that truth itself is historically conditioned and thus capable of being different in different historical epochs. Metaphysical conceptions are of course historically variable, but not their objects, the structures of being. Adorno is doing the the Continental Shuffle, sliding from the epistemic/doxastic to the ontic and back again. That views of truth are historically conditioned is trivial and scarcely in need of being pointed out; but that truth itself is historically conditioned is incoherent.

More fundamentally, what I am objecting to is Adorno's lack of any argument for his view that historical experience can refute a metaphysical thesis and his lack of consideration of the sort of (obvious) objection I am now raising.

The Continental 'trope' or 'move' — such-and-such can no longer be believed –ought to be defended or dropped. Why, for example, should it no longer be possible to believe in God after the horrendous events of the 20th century when people believed in God at the time of the Lisbon earthquake and the time of the Bubonic plague? What is so special about these 20th century horrors? The fact of evil may well rule out the existence of God, or more generally, the affirmability of Being. But if it does, this is surely no recent development.

Doubting and Believing

Doubting no more confers dubitability upon that which is doubted than believing bestows credibility upon that which is believed.