Maverick Philosopher

A reader comments:

You write that “Superstition in this first sense seems to involve a failure to understand the causal structure of the world or the laws of probability” and that it is a “necessary (but not sufficient) condition of a belief's being superstitious is that it entail one or more erroneous beliefs about the causal structure of nature.” I’m curious about what you think of the following case:

A young Christian claims to be harassed by demons. He experiences the harassment, he claims, only during the late hours of the night in his room. His pastor advises the kid to anoint with oil, in the shape of a cross, the door frame to his room (the idea being that such an anointing will “ward off” the demons). 

Do you think this is superstitious? After all, oil is in the relevant sense “material stuff” just as much as a plastic Jesus is. However, the oil is not intended to have a causal effect in nature, but in “the spiritual realm.” I think examples like this are common among religious people. It may not be hard to find one that intuitively counts as superstitious (as another example, consider how Catholic priests are often asked to bless houses or rooms before a Catholic takes up residence in them). What you think of these kinds of cases?

The more examples the better.  Yours is importantly different from the plastic Jesus example in which a power is imputed to a physical thing that it cannot have, the power to protect the vehicle and its occupants from a natural threat.  (Contrast this with the power a properly fastened seat belt has to prevent the driver from going through the windshield in the event of a crash.)  In your example there is imputed to a physical stuff, oil, the power to protect against a physical or spiritual threat emanating from a purely spiritual being.  Since this is a power that oil cannot have, whether applied in the shape of a cross or not, I would say that this type of practice and the underlying belief are superstitious as well.

It is worth noting, however, that a false belief can have a real effect.  Believing, albeit falsely, that he has done something efficacious to ward off demons, the kid may feel reassured and comforted.  The pastor's belief that the kid's daubing the door frame with oil will have a beneficial psychological effect on him is not superstitious.

I once knew a chess player who always wore the same ridiculous little hat, filthy and tattered, at tournaments.  This was his 'lucky hat.'  Donning it, he geared up for chessic combat.  This may or may not be a superstitious practice depending on the underlying belief.  If he believes that the mere donning of the hat directly influences the outcome of games, then the belief is superstitious, or at least bears one of the marks of a superstitious belief.  But there would be nothing superstitious about the belief that donning the hat puts him in a fighting frame of mind, which in turn does have a real effect on his play.

Or consider an airline pilot who suits up prior to a flight.  Donning his uniform, he steps into his role.  'Looking the part' he inspires confidence in himself and in his passengers.  This confidence has a slight but real effect on his performance in the cockpit.  So far, nothing superstitious.  Superstition would come into the picture if the pilot thought that the mere donning of the uniform enhances his skill set, that the insignia, say, have the power to confer upon him good judgment or motor control.

 This is a difficult topic.  Surprisingly little has been written on it by philosophers.  In the JSTOR database I found only four articles, three from the 1930s.  If we don't know what superstition is, then we won't know what genuine religion is either.

John Pepple has written an excellent post in which he sketches a religion free of superstitious elements, thereby showing that there is nothing in the nature of religion — assuming that religion has a nature — that requires that every religion be wholly or even in part superstitious.  Here is his sketch:

1. God exists.
2. Upon creating, God placed all sentient beings in heaven.
3. Some of us sinned and were sent to our universe for punishment.
4. There is no intervention by God in our universe, because that would interfere with the punishment.
5. After we die, we either regain heaven or are reincarnated.
6. We regain heaven not through worship of God but by good behavior, by treating other sentient beings right. In other words, we regain heaven by merit and not by grace.

As I suggested  in Religion and Superstition, the bare belief that there are supernatural beings is not superstitious.  Without essaying a logically impeccable definition of 'superstitious belief' (very difficult if not impossible), I would say that a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of a belief's being superstitious is that it entail one or more erroneous beliefs about the causal structure of nature.  I have seen Catholic baseball players  make the sign of the cross before stepping up to the plate.  That bit of (disgusting) behavior is evidence of a superstitious belief:  clearly the gesture in question has no tendency to raise the probability of connecting with the ball.  Or consider the plastic dashboard Jesus that I mentioned before.    The belief that the presence of this hunk of plastic will ward off automotive mishap is superstitious, and a person who occurrently or dispositionally has many beliefs like this is a superstitious person.

But what if the person believes, not that the piece of plastic will protect him, but that the purely spiritual person represented will protect him by intervening in nature?  That too is arguably superstitious, though not as egreuiously superstitious as the first belief.  One might argue like this:

a. The physical domain is causally closed.
b. The belief that Jesus will intervene in the workings of nature should one, say, have a blow-out is an erroneous belief about the physical domain.
Ergo
c. The belief in question is superstitious.

To make things hard for the religionist  suppose we just assume the causal closure of the physical domain:  every event in the physical universe that has a cause has a physical cause, and every effect of a physical cause is a physical event.  The idea is that no causal influence can enter or exit the physical domain.  That the physical domain is causally closed is neither obvious nor a principle of physics.  It is a philosophical thesis with all the rights, privileges, and debilities pertaining thereunto.

But even if causal closure is true, it doesn't rule out the existence of a wholly immaterial God who sustains the universe at every instant but never intervenes in its law-governed workings.  As far as Pepple and I can see there is nothing superstitious in the belief that such a God exists.  So there is nothing supersitious about Pepple's (1).

I read his (2) as the claim that God creates purely spiritual beings who exist in a purely spiritual domain.  Please note that sentience does not entail having physical sense organs.  For example literal visual seeing does not require the existence of physical eyes. In out-of-body experiences, subjects typically have visual experiences that are not routed through the standard-issue optical transducers in their heads.  And yet they literally (and arguably veridically) see physical things, e.g., the little bald spot on the top of a surgeon's head. 

Ad (3).  How do we get sent into this penal colony of a world?  We are born into it: the preexistent soul begins to inhabit an animal organism.  Soul in this sense is of course not an Aristotleian animating principle or a Thomistic anima forma corporis, but a Platonic soul.  But wouldn't the attaching of a pre-existent soul to an already living organism involve some violation of causal closure?  Not obviously.  But this is a deep question. (I now invoke the blogospheric privilege entailed by the 'Brevity is the soul of blog.')

Pepple's is a rather 'thin' religion but I think it illustrates nicely how religion and superstition can be decoupled.  For his is a belief system that counts as a religion but is clearly not superstitious.

What we need to make this really clear are definitions of 'religion' and 'superstition' ('pseudo-religion').  But definitions in this area are very difficult to come by.  And it may be that religion and superstition are both family-resemblance concepts that are insusceptible of rigorous definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions of application.