To avoid scepticism, we need to trust that human epistemic practices and reality match up. This trust is clearly at least a part of a central epistemic virtue.
Now, trusting persons is a virtue, the virtue of faith. But trusting in general, apart from trusting persons, is not. Theism can thus neatly account for how the trusting that is at the heart of human epistemic practices is virtuous: it is an implicit trust in our creator.
Aristotelian ethics is committed to the claim that the virtuous person knows what actions and habits are virtuous and is justified in holding on to that knowledge, and indeed should hold on to it. There is a deep stability to virtue. This means that an Aristotelian virtuous person ought not adopt a conciliationist response to those who disagree as to what is virtuous, suspending judgment over the disagreed-upon items.
Indeed, one imagines that Aristotle’s virtuous person could say of those who disagree: “They are not virtuous, and hence do not see the truth about moral matters.” Aristotle’s virtuous person would reject the idea that someone who disagrees with them about virtue could be an epistemic peer. Virtuous habits give epistemic access to moral (and not only moral) truth.
Of course, the disagreer may think themselves virtuous as well, and may think the same thing about the virtuous person as the virtuous person thinks about them. But that does not shake the Aristotelian virtuous person.
This means that if Aristotelian virtue ethics is correct, there is a clear thing that a Christian can say about religious disagreement. The Christian thinks faith is a virtue, albeit an infused rather than natural one. As such, faith gives epistemic access, and someone lacking faith is simply not an epistemic peer, since they lack a source of truth. The fact that a person lacking faith thinks they have the virtue of faith should not move the person who actually has the virtue.
Of course, one might turn all this around and use it as an argument against virtue ethics. But I think Aristotle’s picture seems exactly correct as to the kind of firmness of moral knowledge that the virtuous person exhibits, the kind of spine that lets them say, without pride or vanity, to vast numbers of others that they are simply wrong.
There are many ways of life that people claim to be virtuous. A central thesis of Aristotelian ethics is:
She knows this by living virtuously, which enables a from-the-inside appreciation of the virtue of the virtuous life she lives. This is a mysterious thing, but it means that the virtuous person does not need to worry sceptically about the fact that other people disagree with her about this way of life being virtuous (maybe they say to her: “You should have a stronger preference for people of your country over foreigners”, and she just knows that her preference should not be stronger). These other people are not virtuous, and hence lack that from-the-inside view on what it is to live a virtuous life, and hence they are not her epistemic peers with respect to virtue.
Suppose we accept (1). Now imagine that Therese leads a kind of life L that is deeply intertwined with a particular religion R, in such a way that clearly L would be unlikely to be virtuous if R were false, but is very likely to be virtuous if R is true.
It is easy to imagine cases like this. Perhaps most religious and non-religious views other than R would object to significant aspects of L—perhaps, L includes forms of activism that R praises but most other religious and non-religious views look down on, or lacks forms of activity that most religious and non-religious views other than R think are required for a fulfilling human life. The life of a good contemplative Catholic nun is like that: most non-Catholic views will see it as a waste.
Suppose, further, that Therese is in fact virtuous. Then she knows that L is virtuous, and this gives her significant evidence that R is true because of how much L is bound up with R.
One may have a Christian worry about what I just said. What about humility? Would Therese know that she is living a virtuous life? But she might: true self-insight is compatible with humility. However, my argument does not assume that Therese knows that she is living a virtuous life. All that (1) says is that Therese knows that L is a virtuous life—but she need not know that she is in fact living out L. She knows the model of the virtuous life by living it, but she may not know that she is living it. (Aristotle wouldn’t like that.)
Now, suppose that Therese’s virtue in fact comes from God’s grace. Then Therese has a deep reason to know R on the basis of grace: the grace leads to virtue, and the virtue leads to knowledge of what is virtuous.
So, we have a model for how saints of the true religion can know the truths of their faith, because their radical forms of life are so tightly bound up with their religion that their knowledge that this way of life is virtuous (a knowledge compatible with certain ways of agonizing about whether they are in fact living that way) yields knowledge of their religion.
Can this help those of us who are not saints? I think so. It is possible to see the virtue of another’s form of life even when one does not have much virtue. And then the tight intertwining between the saint’s life of virtue and the saint’s religion provides one with evidence of the truth of their religion.
(Note the similarities to the line of thought in van Inwagen's deeply moving "Quam Dilecta".)
Is this immune to sceptical worries in the way that the virtuous person’s knowledge of the virtue of the form of life she follows is? I don’t know. I think there is room for some proper-functionalism here: we may have a faculty of recognition of a virtuous form of life.
Note, finally, that there are multiple virtuous forms of life, some less radical than others. The more radical ones are likely to be more tightly bound up with their religion, and hence provide more evidence—even if they are not necessarily more virtuous. Perhaps the difference is in how specific a religion is testified to by the virtue of the way of life. Thus, the contemplative cloistered saint’s life may give strong evidence of Catholicism, or at least of the disjunction of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, while the life of a married saint as seen from the outside may “only” give strong evidence of Christianity.
It is common in our culture to see religion as a matter of faith. Indeed, religions are sometimes even called “faiths”.
Here is a reason why one should be cautious with conceptualizing things in this way. Faith is a specifically Christian concept, with Christianity being centrally conceptualized as a matter of faith in Jesus Christ. To think about all religions in terms of faith is to presuppose that the Christian understanding of what is central to Christianity yields a correct way of understanding the life of other religions.
Either Christianity is or is not basically true.
If Christianity is basically true, then its self-understanding in terms of faith is likely correct. However, the truth of Christianity does not give one good reason to think other religions, with the possible exception of Judaism, would be rightly understood in terms of the concept of faith.
If Christianity is not basically true, then we should be cautious even about its own self-characterization. Self-understanding is an epistemic achievement, and if Christianity is not basically true, then we should not take it for granted that faith has the central role it is claimed to have. And we should certainly not expect that the self-characterization of a religion that is not true should also apply to other religions.
Consider this modified version of William James’ mountaineer case: The mountaineer’s survival depends on his jumping over a crevasse, and the mountaineer knows that he will succeed in jumping over the crevasse if he believes he will succeed, but doesn’t know that he will succeed as he doesn’t know whether he will come to believe that he will succeed.
James used his version of the case to argue that pragmatic reasons can legitimately override lack of epistemic reasons.
But what is interesting to me in my variant is the way it provides a counterexample to evidentialism. Evidentialists say that you epistemically should form your beliefs only on the basis of evidence. But notice that although the belief that he will succeed at the jump needs to be formed in the absence of evidence for its truth, as soon as it is formed, the belief itself becomes its own evidence to the point that it turns into knowledge. The belief is self-guaranteeing. So there seems to be nothing to criticize epistemically about the formation of the belief, even though the formation is independent of evidence. In fact, it seems, there is a good epistemic reason to believe, since by believing the mountaineer increases the stock of his knowledge.
Moreover, we can even make the case be one where the evidence on balance points against the proposition. Perhaps the mountaineer has attempted, in safer circumstances, to get himself to believe that he can make such a jump, and seven times out of ten he has failed at both self-induction of belief, and also at the jump. But in the remaining three times out of ten, he succeeded at both. So, then, the mountaineer has non-conclusive evidence that he won’t manage to believe that he will succeed (and that he won’t succeed). If he comes to believe that he will succeed, he comes to believe this against the evidence—but, still, in doing, he increases his stock of knowledge, since the belief, once believed, is self-guaranteeing.
(This phenomenon of self-guaranteeing belief reminds me of things that Kierkegaard says about faith, where faith itself is a miracle that hence is evidence for its truth.)
Interestingly, we might also be able to construct cases of well-evidenced but self-defeating beliefs. Consider a jeweler who has noticed that she is successful at cutting a diamond if and only if she believes she will be unsuccessful. Her theory is that belief in her success makes her insufficiently careful. Over time, she has learned to suspend judgment in her success, and hence to be successful. But now she reflects on her history, and she finds herself with evidence that he will be successful in cutting the next diamond. Yet if she believes on this evidence, this will render her overconfident, and hence render the belief false!
This is related to the examples in this paper on lying.
So perhaps what the evidentialist needs to say is that you epistemically may believe p if and only if the evidence says that if you believe p, p is true?
Christians are called to have faith in Jesus Christ.
The Old Testament, however, is big on not putting our faith in anything other than God.
Thus, someone who has faith in Jesus Christ but does not believe that Jesus Christ is God is risking violating a central principle of the Old Testament.
Moreover, faith in Jesus requires submission to Jesus. But Jesus wants his followers to obey the central principles of the Old Testament.
Thus, for someone aware of these observations, it is not possible to have faith in Jesus Christ without believing that he is God. This is a serious problem for accounts of faith that claim that a Christian need not have any doctrinal beliefs.
A number of authors have claimed that it is possible to practice the Christian faith without assigning a high epistemic probability to central doctrines of Christianity. Here is an interesting problem with such a practice. A central part of Christian practice is to worship Jesus Christ as God. Now, Jesus Christ is uncontroversially a man. Christianity adds that he is also God. If that additional belief is false, then we who worship Jesus Christ as God are idolaters. But it is wrong to undertake a serious risk of idolatry. Thus, it is only permissible to practice the Christian faith if by one's lights the risk of idolatry is not serious. And the only way that can be is if one assigns a high epistemic probability to the doctrine that Jesus Christ is God. Thus, it seems, at least this central doctrine of the Incarnation needs to have a high epistemic probability if one is to be morally justified in practicing the Christian faith.
There is, however, a hole in the argument. Idolatry is only a great evil if God exists. Now imagine someone who assigns a high conditional probability to the Incarnation on the condition that God exists, but who assigns a low unconditional probability to both the Incarnation and the existence of God. Such a person can reason as follows. Either God exists or not. If God does not exist, there is not much evil in idolatry, and so not much harm in worshiping Jesus as God. If God does exist, however, then probably the Incarnation is true, and the value of worshiping Jesus outweighs the risks, since the risks are small.
So, what I think my overall argument shows is that it is wrong to practice the Christian faith without assigning a high epistemic probability to the doctrine of the Incarnation if one assigns a significantly higher epistemic probability to theism. Thus, someone who comes to be convinced that theism is true but assigns a low epistemic probability to Christianity should not practice Christianity.
Objection: Perhaps it is just as morally evil to fail to worship as God someone who is in fact God as it is to worship as God someone who is not. In that case, by not practicing Christianity, one also takes on a great moral risk, and perhaps the risks cancel out.
Response: I think it not just as morally evil to fail to worship as God someone who is in fact God. As far as we know, John the Baptist did not worship Jesus as God, but we have no reason to think that this was a great evil, on the par of idolatry.
It is galling to be punished or even criticized unjustly. But it can also be galling to be rewarded or even praised unjustly. Over the past two years, two of my graduate students have received grants. They did all the work. But because of university policy, I had to be listed as the PI on the grants. And I’ve been getting multiple letters from the administration congratulating me on the grants. That’s galling.
I think God would be similarly galled if he were thanked for something he didn’t do, unless he did something just as good or better. And so God would have strong reason to act to ensure that such thanks would not be forthcoming.
Thus, we have reason to think that whatever people sincerely thank God for, God has either done that—or something at least as good—for them. In particular, we have reason to think that God has become incarnate and died for our sins or has done something at least as good.
Notice an interesting way that this argument makes available something like an implicit faith to non-Christian theists. For non-Christian theists also have reason to believe, on the strength of this argument, that God did something at least as good as what Christianity says he did, and to thank God for doing this. If they then thank God for "doing something at least this good", they would be implicitly thanking God for the Incarnation and Redemption, since in fact that is something God did that was "at least this good".
Every so often I worry that my fear of death (which, I have to confess, is more a fear of non-existence than a fear of hell) shows that I lack faith in the afterlife. I think this is a mistaken worry.
I regularly climb our 53-foot climbing wall. One can “rainbow” climb, using whatever holds one sees fit, or one can follow a route, with a broad range of route difficulties. On the easiest routes, at least if I am not tired and am wearing climbing shoes, I know I will succeed. On the hardest routes, I know I would fail. Of course I always use proper safety equipment (rope belay, and there are also mats around the base), and usually I am not scared, because on the basis of good empirical data I trust the safety setup.
Now imagine that all the safety equipment was gone, but that to save someone’s life I needed to climb to the top. Once at the top, I’d be safe, let’s suppose (maybe there would be an auto-belay there that I could clip into for the descent). I could choose the side of the wall and the holds. Without safety equipment, I would be terrified. (The mere thought experiment literally makes my hands sweat.) But you could would be quite correct in telling me: “Alex, you know you will succeed.”
Here’s the simple point. When much is at stake, knowledge of success is compatible with great fear. But if knowledge is compatible with great fear, why shouldn’t faith be as well?
Alice: I just saw a giraffe in my yard.No, Bob doesn't trust Alice. If he trusted her, his credence that she's telling the truth would have been high.
Bob: I always trust you about what's in your yard. So I think it's 55% likely there is a giraffe in your yard.
I am not claiming that we always assign high credence in the assertions of someone we trust in a given matter. This dialogue is perfectly sensible.
Alice to Carla: I just saw a giraffe in my yard.In the second dialogue, the reason Bob's credence that there is a giraffe in Alice's yard is lowish has little to do with not trusting Alice about these matters. Rather, it is that he doesn't trust his hearing--he's far from sure that he heard her report a giraffe. I assume in the first dialogue, Bob is quite confident that Alice reported a giraffe--if he isn't, there is no problem.
Bob to Dave: I always trust Alice about what's in her yard. I think I might have just overheard her saying that she saw a giraffe in her yard. So now I think it's 25% likely there is a giraffe in her yard.
Trust doesn't require high credence in the assertions of the person we trust. But:
Now, here is a question that has had some discussion in the literature: Is it rationally possible to have explicit Christian faith (I am using "explicit" to distinguish from the kind of faith that an "anonymous Christian" might have) and assign only a modest (not at all high) credence to the proposition that God exists? I think that given fairly uncontroversial historical evidence, this can't happen. Here is why:
Interestingly, as far as arguments like this go, it might be possible to have faith in God while only assigning a modest credence to the existence of God. Someone who has faith in God will trust God. So she will assign a high credence to disjunctions like: God loves us or God didn't say God loves us. But while it's uncontroversial that Jesus said God loves us, it's controversial that God said God loves us, since it's controversial whether God exists, but the existence of Jesus is an uncontroversial historical matter (I understand that even the Soviet historians eventually stopped saying that there was no Jesus).
Do theists typically believe by faith in God that God exists? Faith is much more than propositional belief. But someone who has faith in a person can believe propositions by faith. What does that mean? I want to start with this necessary condition:
But given (1), how could one believe that y exists by faith in y? One would have to believe that y exists because one took y to assure one specifically to that effect. But that would be rationally odd. Granted, I could hear a voice in the dark assuring "I exist", and I could first believe that The Voice is assuring me that it exists, and conclude from this that The Voice exists. But I wouldn't be concluding that The Voice exists because of the specific content of what was voiced, but simply because something was voiced. The connection between the assurance and the belief that The Voice exists is not a connection in the right way for belief by faith.
Granted, it is possible that the voice sounds so trustworthy that I first form the belief that the content of what was said is true, and then because of that I come to believe that The Voice exists. In that case, I would indeed be believing that The Voice exists and doing so by faith. But I would be ignoring an obvious logical inference from one's data and getting the conclusion of that inference by other means. So what we seem to learn from the case of The Voice is this:
But that doesn't quite answer the question I started with, namely whether theists typically believe by faith that God exists. For it could be that (2) is true, and that most people do in fact go for the obvious logical inference, but the voice of God assuring them of his existence is so powerful that in most cases the belief is overdetermined: they believe both by obvious logical inference from God's assurance and by faith.
There is a second complication. One might have faith in y under one description and believe that y exists under another description. For instance, suppose that The Voice in the dark says: "I am the brother you never thought you had." Then you might believe your brother exists by faith in The Voice. This model works well for Christianity. A Christian might well believe that God exists by faith in Christ, even though Christ is in fact God.
Does the model work outside of Christianity, say in Old Testament times? Well, the Voice/brother case suggests that it might work in cases of religious experience. But it seems implausible that most of the theists in Old Testament times were theists because they had a religious experience whose content included an assurance of God's existence. Maybe, though, one can introduce the notion of indirectly believing by faith, where you indirectly believe something by faith provided that you infer it from something that you (directly) believe by faith. To adapt a Plantinga example, God might give you a religious experience that God forgave you your sins; trust in the "inner voice" (i.e., in God, but you don't know that right away) leads you to believe by faith that God forgave you your sins; and then you conclude by logic that God exists.
I don't have an answer to the question I started with, whether theists typically believe by faith in God that God exists. But I have a story that would have to hold for the answer to be affirmative. Typical theists would either have to be in a rational overdetermination scenario or they would have to be in a position where the difference between two different ways of referring to God can be leveraged to make it rationally possible for them to first believe in an assurer, who happens to be God, and then in God as such.
There is a strong Christian tradition of seeing faith as involving certainty. Now, perhaps this certainty is just something like moral certainty (for a sophisticated account, see this) or what I call "security" or "sureness". But it is worth interesting to explore the possibility that faith involves certainty in the full sense of the word, requiring a probability equal to one to be assigned to those propositions that come under faith (this does not imply that faith is exhausted by believing propositions).
There are at least two problems with a certainty reading of faith. The first is with justification: How could someone be justified in assigning a probability of one to propositions as controversial as those of the Christian faith? The second starts with an empirical claim: Typical Christians do not have certainty. Given this, it follows that if faith requires certainty, then typical Christians do not have faith, which is definitely depressing and perhaps not so plausible.
But I think there is a way around both difficulties. The Christian tradition sees faith as a gift of the Holy Spirit. It does not seem problematic that the Holy Spirit would infuse someone with a certainty about a truth that the Holy Spirit himself knows with certainty. There are at least two possibilities here. First, it could be that the right kind of externalism (e.g., reliabilism or reformed epistemology) holds so that the certainty of the beliefs that come from such an infusion is epistemically justified. Second, it could be that there is nothing bad about having epistemically unjustified beliefs when they are in fact true and when the agent is not at fault for their formation and maintenance. It would be better to have justification as well, but it's better to have the true beliefs than to suspend judgment. And, plausibly, the story of the infusion of belief could be spelled out in a way that does not make the agent be at fault.
Regarding the empirical problem, here I am less confident. But here is a suggestion. What makes us think that typical Christians do not have certainty? Presumably that they so report it. Or so I'll assume for the sake of the argument, without spending time checking if there are any worldwide studies that check whether typical Christians report not having certainty.
Presumably, introspection is the primary reason why Christians report not having certainty. But I suspect that introspection is not a very reliable guide in a case like this. It seems to me that there are two primary ways by which we introspect the credence we have in a belief. The first is that we introspect to the evidence we take ourselves to have and assume that our credence matches the evidence. But when our certainty goes beyond the evidence, or at least goes beyond the evidence that we are aware of, this isn't going to be a reliable guide to the credence. The second is direct awareness (often comparative) of our credences. Often this is based on feelings of confidence. But such feelings are, I think, not all that reliable. They provide evidence as to actual confidence, but that evidence is not all that strong. While we should try to avoid error theories all other things being equal, it does not seem so bad to say that Christians tend to be wrong when they ascribe to themselves a credence lower than one.
I am inclined to take the best reading of the Christian tradition to be that faith comes with certainty. I also think that I have faith, but I do not in fact feel certain (at least not in the probability one sense). Given that my best reading of the Christian tradition is that faith comes with certainty, I conclude that probably I am certain, notwithstanding my feelings.
This is a followup on the preceding post.
1. Whenever the rational credence of p is 0.5 on some evidence base E, at least 50% of human agents who assign a credence to p on E will assign a credence between 0.25 and 0.75.
2. The log-odds of the credence assigned by human agents given an evidence base can be appropriately modeled by the log-odds of the rational credence on that evidence base plus a normally distributed error whose standard deviation is small enough to guarantee the truth of 1.
3. Therefore, if I have no evidence about a proposition p other than that some agent assigned credence r on her evidence base, I should assign a credence at least as far from 0.5 as F(r), where:
4. This is a pretty trusting attitude.
5. So, it is rational to be pretty trusting.
The trick behind the argument is to note that (1) and (2) guarantee that the standard deviation of the normally distributed error on the log-odds is less than 1.63, and then we just do some numerical integration (with Derive) to compute the expected value of the rational credence.
There is no salvation apart from faith in Christ. But what about those who haven't heard of Christ? A standard story is that they can have a spiritual relationship with Christ even though they do not know that they are having a relationship with Christ. They can be "anonymous Christians."
But faith is supposed to be an interpersonal relationship. The kind of hidden mysterious relationship that falls under the head of anonymous Christianity seems to fall short of the best kind of interpersonality, and seems not to be very incarnational in character. Now, there is nothing wrong with saying that although it falls short of the best kind of interpersonality, it is sufficient as faith. But I want to explore a dimension that gives more of an interpersonal and incarnational aspect to being an anonymous Christian.
Suppose that our anonymous Christian is blessed by being in a community with other anonymous Christians. They are all, unbeknonwst to themselves, animated by the grace of Christ. They are all, unbeknownst to themselves, members of the body of Christ. Thus in relating to one another they are relating to Christ. But their relations to one another do have the right kind of interpersonality and incarnational character. The presence of Christ through other anonymous Christians in their community—maybe even everyone in the community is an anonymous Christian—make their implicit faith in and love of Christ much more of an interpersonal relation than it would otherwise be. And of course in this regard they are not that different from explicit Christians, since so much of what we know of Christ is based on what we know of people whose lives are made radiant by Christ's grace.
The deep realization that Christ is our only hope has significant existential force for a lot of people in motivating Christian faith. It is interesting that there need be nothing irrational here. In fact, a clearly valid argument can be given:
Clichéd as that sounds, premise (1) really is something that I come to realize more and more deeply the longer I live. (See also this book by one of my distinguished colleagues.) Premise (3) is some kind of "logical truth'. Premise (4) would, I think, take some defending. I think the central thought here is something like the idea that Christ is Lord, liar or lunatic, and in the latter two cases there is no hope with Christ.
Premise (2) is the crucial one. I suspect that accepting (2) in the relevant deep existential sense of "There is hope" usually, perhaps always, is a fruit of grace. There is darkness, but one sees that there is light shining in it even if one cannot identify the light.
One can perhaps, though this very rare, argue oneself by the light of natural reason into accepting that the central doctrines of Christianity are true. But without grace one cannot argue oneself into accepting the central doctrines of Christianity (it is one thing to think something is true and another to accept it; I think the latest theorem proved by my colleagues at the Mathematics Department is true, but I don't accept it—if only because I don't know what it is!), much less into having faith in them.
It may be that for some people the point where grace enters the process of gaining faith is precisely at premise (2). If grace enters the process at accpetance of (2), this is quite interesting. For (2) is not overtly Christian. Yet when someone comes to faith in this way, with grace entering the process in conjunction with an existentially rich acceptance of (2), it plausibly follows that at that stage they already have faith. For, plausibly, there is no way to get to faith from something that isn't faith without grace. So that means that a deep existential acceptance of (2) (and that's not just a light and breezy optimism) could itself be faith.
The reflections on grace and faith are simply speculation. But the argument I stand by.
This is pretty obvious, but I never quite thought of it in those terms: The prisoners' dilemma shows the need for the virtue of trust (or faith, in a non-theological sense). In the absence of contrary evidence, we should assume others to act well, to cooperate.
This assumption perhaps cannot be justified epistemically non-circularly, at least not without adverting to theism, since too much of our knowledge rests on the testimony of others, and hence is justified by trust. Our own observations simply are not sufficient to tell us that others are trustworthy. There is too much of a chance that people are betraying us behind our backs, and it is only by relying on theism, the testimony of others, or directly on trust, that we can conclude that this is not so.
It seems to me that the only way out of the circle of trust would be an argument for the existence of a perfect being (or for some similar thesis, like axiarchism) that does not depend on trust, so that I can then conclude that people created by a perfect being are likely to be trustworthy. But perhaps every argument rests on trust, if only a trust in our own faculties?
If there are ten lottery tickets, and I hold one, I shouldn't hope to win, but I should simply assign probability 1/10 to my winning. Anything beyond the probabilities in the way of hope would be irrational. Likewise, if I have probability 9/10 of winning. Then I can have confidence, but this confidence should no more be a hope than in the former case. It's just a confidence of 9/10.
But if my friend has fallen morally many times but promises to do better, I shouldn't simply calculate the probability of his doing better using the best inductive logic and leave it at that. I should hope he will do better.
What makes for the difference? In the case of the friend, he should do better. But it is, of course, false that I should win the lottery. Indeed, the outcome of my winning the lottery is in no way normatively picked out. I can appropriately hope that the lottery will be run fairly, but that's that.
If this is right then it seems hope is of what should be. Well, that's not quite right. For if I have done something so terrible that my friend is under no obligation to forgive me, I can still hope for her supererogatory forgiveness. So, perhaps, hope is of what should be or what goes over and beyond a should.
If this is right, then this neatly dovetails with my account of trust or faith. Faith has as its proper object a present state of affairs that should be, such as a testifier's honesty and reliability, or perhaps—I now add—a present state of affairs that goes beyond a should. Hope has as its proper object a future state of affairs that should be or goes beyond a should. Both of these flow from love.
If this is right, then in order for there to be appropriate hope in things beyond human power—such as a hope that an asteroid won't wipe out all life on earth—there must be shoulds, or beyond-shoulds, that go beyond human power. This requires an Aristotelian teleology or theism.
Loving someone has three aspects: the benevolent, the unitive and the appreciative. (I develop this early on in One Body.) Believing something and gaining knowledge on the testimony of another teaching involves all three aspects of love.
Appreciation: If I believe you on testimony, then I accept you as a person who speaks honestly and reasons well. It is a way of respecting your epistemic achievement. This does not mean that a failure to accept your testimony is always unappreciative. I may appreciate you, but have good reason to think that the information you have received is less complete than mine.
Union: Humans are social animals, and our sociality is partly constituted by our joint epistemic lives. To accept your testimony is to be united with you epistemically.
Benevolence: Excelling at our common life of learning from and teaching one another is a part of our flourishing. If I gain knowledge from you, you thereby flourish as my teacher. Thus by learning from you, I benefit not only myself as learner but I benefit you by making you a successful teacher.
We learn from John Paul II's philosophical anthropology that we are essentially givers and accepters of gifts. In giving, epistemically and otherwise, we are obviously benevolent, but also because it is the human nature to be givers, in grateful acceptance of a gift we benefit, unite with and affirm the giver, thereby expressing all three aspects of love.
L: Rhetorical persuasion does not track truth in the way that good arguments do. The best way for us to collectively come to truth is well-reasoned arguments presented in a dry and rigorous way, avoiding rhetorical flourishes. Rhetoric makes weaker arguments appear stronger than they are and a practice of giving rhetorically powerful arguments can make stronger arguments appear weaker.
R: Rhetoric appeals to emotions and emotions are truth-tracking, albeit their reliability, except in the really virtuous individual, may not be high. So I don't believe that rhetorical persuasion does not track truth. But I will grant it for our conversation, L. Still, you're forgetting something crucial. People have an irrational bias against carefully listening to arguments that question their own basic assumptions. Rhetoric and other forms of indirect argumentation sneak in under the radar of one's biases and make it possible to convince people of truths that otherwise they would be immune to.
L: Let's have the conversation about the emotions on another day. I suspect that even if emotions are truth-tracking, in practice they are sufficiently unreliable except in the very virtuous, and it is not the very virtuous that you are talking of convincing. I find your argument ethically objectionable. You are placing yourself intellectually over other people, taking them to have stupid biases, sneaking under their guard and riding roughshod over their autonomy.
R: That was rhetoric, not just argument!
L: Mea culpa. But you see the argumentative point, no?
R: I do, and I agree it is a real worry. But given that there is no other way of persuading not very rational humans, what else can we do?
L: But there are other ways of persuading them. We could use threats or brainwashing.
R: But that would be wrong!
L: This is precisely the point at issue. Threats or brainwashing would violate autonomy. You seemed to grant that rhetorical argument does so as well. So it should be wrong to convince by rhetorical argument just as much as by threats or brainwashing.
R: But it's good for someone to be persuaded of the truth when they have biases that keep them from truth.
L: I don't dispute that. But aren't you then just paternalistically saying that it's alright to violate people's autonomy for their own good?
R: I guess so. Maybe autonomy isn't an absolute value, always to be respected.
L: So what objection do you have to convincing people of the truth by threat or brainwashing?
R: Such convincing—granting for the sake of argument that it produces real belief—would violate autonomy too greatly. I am not saying that every encroachment on autonomy is justified, but only that the mild encroachment involved in couching one's good arguments in a rhetorically effective form is.
L: I could pursue the question whether you shouldn't by the same token say that for a great enough good you can encroach on autonomy greatly. But let me try a different line of thought. Wouldn't you agree that it would be a unfortunate thing to use means other than the strength of argument to convince someone of a falsehood?
R: Yes, though only because it is unfortunate to be convinced of a falsehood. In other words, it is no more unfortunate than being convinced of a falsehood by means of strong but ultimately unsound or misleading arguments.
L: I'll grant you that. But being convinced by means of argument tracks truth, though imperfectly. Being convinced rhetorically does not.
R: It does when I am convincing someone of a truth!
L: Do you always try to convince people of truths?
R: I see what you mean. I do always try to convince people of what I at the time take to be the truth—except in cases where I am straightforwardly and perhaps wrongfully deceitful, sinner that I am—but I have in the past been wrong, and there have been some times when what I tried to convince others of has been false.
L: Don't you think that some of the things you are now trying to convince others of will fall in the same boat, though of course you can't point out which they are, on pain of self-contradiction?
R: Yes. So?
L: Well, then, when you strive to convince someone by rhetorical means of a falsehood, you are more of a spreader of error than when you try to do so by means of dry arguments.
R: Because dry arguments are less effective?
L: No, because reasoning with dry arguments is more truth conducive. Thus, when you try to convince someone of a falsehood by means of a dry argument, it is more likely that you will fail for truth-related reasons—that they will see the falsehood of one of your premises or the invalidity of one of your inferences. Thus, unsound arguments will be more likely to fail to convince than sound arguments will be. But rhetoric can as easily convince of falsehood as of truth.
R: I know many people who will dispute the truth conduciveness of dry argument, but I am not one of them—I think our practices cannot be explained except by thinking there is such conduciveness there. But I could also say that rhetorical argument is truth conducive in a similar way. The truth when attractively shown forth is more appealing than a rhetorically dressed up falsehood.
L: Maybe. But we had agreed to take for granted in our discussion that rhetorical persuasion is not truth tracking.
R: Sorry. It's easy to forget yourself when you've granted a falsehood for the sake of discussion. Where were we?
L: I said that reasoning with dry arguments is more truth conducive, and hence runs less of a risk of persuading people of error.
R: Is it always wrong to take risks?
L: No. But the social practice of rhetorical presentation of arguments—or, worse, of rhetorical non-argumentative persuasion—is less likely to lead to society figuring out the truth on controversial questions.
R: Are you saying that we should engage in those intellectual practices which, when practiced by all, are more likely to lead to truth?
L: I am not sure I want to commit myself to this in all cases, but in this one, yes.
R: I actually think one can question your claim about social doxastic utility. Rhetorical persuasion leads to a greater number of changes of mind. A society that engages in practices of rhetorical persuasion is likely to have more in the way of individual belief change, as dry arguments do not in fact convince. But a society with more individual belief change might actually be more effective at coming to the truth, since embodying different points of view in the same person at different times can lead to a better understanding of the positions and ultimately a better rational decision between them. We could probably come up with some interesting computation social epistemology models here.
L: You really think this?
R: No. But it seems no less likely to be correct than your claim that dry argument is a better social practice truth-wise.
L: Still, maybe there is a wager to be run here. Should you engage in persuasive practices here that (a) by your own admission negatively impact the autonomy of your interlocutors and (b) are no more likely than not to lead to a better social epistemic state?
R: So we're back to autonomy?
L: Yes.
R: But as I said I see autonomy not as an absolute value. If I see that a person is seriously harming herself through her false beliefs, do I not have a responsibility to help her out—the Golden Rule and all that!—even if I need to get around her irrational defenses by rhetorical means?
L: But how do you know that you're not the irrational one, about to infect an unwary interlocutor?
R: Are you afraid of being infected by me?
L: I am not unwary. Seriously, aren't you taking a big risk in using rhetorical means of persuasion, in that such means make you potentially responsible for convincing someone, in a way that side-steps some of her autonomy, of a falsehood? If by argument you persuade someone, then she at least has more of a responsibility here. But if you change someone's mind by rhetoric—much as (but to as smaller degree) when by threat or brainwashing—the responsibility for the error rests on you.
R: That is a scary prospect.
L: Indeed.
R: But sometimes one must do what is scary. Sometimes love of neighbor requires one to take on responsibilities, to take risks, to help one's neighbor out of an intellectual pit. Taking the risks can be rational and praiseworthy. And sometimes one can be rationally certain, too.
L: I am not sure about the certainty thing. But it seems that your position is now limited. That it is permissible to use rhetorical persuasion when sufficiently important goods of one's neighbor are at stake that the risk of error is small relative to these.
R: That may be right. Thus, it may be right to teach virtue or the Gospel by means that include rhetorical aspects, but it might be problematic to rhetorically propagate those aspects of science or philosophy that are not appropriately connected to virtue or the Gospel. Though even there I am not sure. For those things that aren't connected to virtue or the Gospel don't matter much, and error about them is not a great harm, so the risks may still be doable. But you have inclined me to think that one may need a special reason to engage in rhetoric.
L: Conditionally, of course, on our assumption that rhetoric is not truth-conducive in itself.
R: Ah, yes, I almost forgot that.
