Abstract
While there has been considerable interest in the nature of faith and trust in recent philosophical literature, relatively little has been said about what it is for faith or trust to be psychologically stronger or weaker. Drawing on recent accounts of propositional faith by Daniel Howard-Snyder and Lara Buchak, I argue that the strength of one’s faith can vary in two distinct dimensions. The first primarily involves the extent to which one’s confidence motivates one to take risks (and secondarily involves other cognitive and emotional factors). The second involves the resilience of the first dimension of strength to possible counterevidence.
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Notes
See Audi (2011) for useful discussion.
Not all attributions of “faith in” involve faith in others to act. We sometimes describe people as having faith in someone as an F (e.g., as a carpenter, a scholar, a spouse) or simply as having faith in someone [full stop]. We also describe people as having faith in ideals, such as democracy. Faith in ideals seems importantly different in that it doesn’t seem closely connected with trust. (I don’t trust democracy to do anything.) I hold out hope that the other locutions involving faith in people can be explained, at least in part, in terms of faith X to \(\phi\), although I will not argue for this claim here.
See Simpson (2012) for a helpful overview of the literature on trust.
In the book version, Strider gives the practical argument that wins the day: "[C]aution is one thing and wavering another. You will never get to Rivendell now on your own, and to trust me is your only chance. You must make up your mind." Tolkien (1994, 164).
This way of speaking, arguably, occurs also in pithy, belittling definitions of faith that make it out to be essentially a matter of belief in the absence of or in spite of evidence (e.g., Mark Twain’s well-known quip that “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”).
Gendler (2008) uses a variation of this example to motivate a distinction between belief and what she calls “alief,” which is a state that is more automatic and less responsive to reason than is belief. On her view, I believe but don’t alieve the proposition that the skywalk will hold. Although this example is not strictly a case of interpersonal faith, I use it in part in order to acknowledge the relevance of this literature on belief to the present project. It should be relatively easy for the reader to construct parallel cases involving trust in others.
Having faith that X will \(\phi\) is not sufficient for having faith in X to \(\phi\). I might have faith that my son will clean his room without having faith in him to clean his room if, for example, I think it is likely that his mom will make him do it.
Philosophers who have denied that propositional faith entails belief include (Audi 1991; Alston 1996; Schellenberg 2005; Pojman 1986; Swinburne 2005; McKaughan 2013; Howard-Snyder 2013a). In the trust literature, several philosophers have denied that trusting or relying on someone to \(\phi\) requires believing that the person will \(\phi\). See Frost-Arnold (2014), Faulkner (2012), Alonso (2016), Jones (1996), Holton (1994).
Howard-Snyder adopts Alston’s (1996, 2007) distinction between acceptance and belief (inspired by Cohen (1992)). On this account, acceptance is similar to belief in that it involves several dispositions, including dispositions to assert that p and to act as if p is true. Acceptance differs from belief in that it does not involve a disposition for it to seem that p is true. Howard-Snyder’s category of assuming that p is still weaker, since it does not include the disposition to assert that p.
In denying that positive conative and evaluative attitudes fit into an account of strength of faith, we need not deny Howard-Snyder’s claim that these attitudes are necessary conditions for propositional faith. To better see this, it may be useful to compare having faith that p with being hopeful that p. The question, “How hopeful are you that p?” carries with it a presupposition that you desire that p be true. One cannot be hopeful that p without desiring that p. However, an appropriate answer to the question will not cite the strength of your desire. It will instead cite the strength of your cognitive stance toward p. A natural answer will describe how likely you take it to be that p, and not how much you want p to be true. In the same way, I suggest, “How strong is your faith that p?” is a question about the strength of your cognitive attitude toward p, although it may carry with it the presupposition that you have positive conative and evaluative attitudes toward the proposition.
Bratman (1999, 24) uses similar examples to show that acceptance has a stronger connection to action than does belief. Cf. (Schwitzgebel 2015). My mom believes that the skywalk will hold, but she does not accept that it will. I believed it would hold the entire time, but came to accept that it would. In general, belief differs from acceptance in that it does not imply that the subject is willing to perform every salient risky action in the situation. (In Howard-Snyder’s framework, we might also say that my mom believed but was unable to assume for the purposes of action that it would hold).
Hieronymi (2008) raises an objection along these lines against the idea that one can voluntarily choose to trust.
Buchak gives a more formal definition: “[A]n act constitutes an individual’s taking a risk on X just in case for some alternative act B, A is preferred to B under the supposition that X, and B is preferred to A under the supposition that \(\overline{X}\).” Buchak (2014, 54).
If degrees of confidence just are preferences over bets one might be offered, then the dispositions or pattern of preferences Buchak mentions might be taken to imply a degree of confidence. However, I don't think Buchak accepts this view (nor does it seem that a theory of faith should be saddled with so controversial a view). In other places, she seems to endorse the view of Eriksson and Hájek (2007), according to which even a Buddhist monk who had no preferences at all might still have degrees of belief. (They recommend that decision theorists treat degrees of confidence as a primitive concept.).
Here is another argument for making a cognitive state central to propositional faith: It makes perfect sense to question whether a particular case of propositional faith is epistemically justified or counts as knowledge. (Indeed, whether religious faith is ever epistemically justified or counts as knowledge has been a central topic in philosophy of religion.) But this question involves a category error if faith is not at least partially constituted by a cognitive attitude that can be epistemically evaluated. Given Buchak's account of faith in terms of dispositions to act and preferences, we can ask whether these states are pragmatically rational, or whether the cognitive states that motivate them are epistemically justified or based on knowledge; however, it seems that faith itself cant be directly epistemically evaluated.
Martin (2013) introduces the helpful term “licensing stance” for the attitude I have in mind here. One can come to see the likelihood of a proposition as licensing certain actions or attitudes. Thus, Frodo and company came to see the likelihood of Strider’s leading them with competence and good will as enough to license their following him.
Cf. Audi (2011, 77): “Even outside religious contexts, faith tends to eliminate or diminish fear and other negative emotions concerning the same object, such as anxiety, depression, and anger.”
Fantl and McGrath (2009, 141) Fantl and McGrath use this point to argue against a Lockean view of belief, according to which to believe is to have a credence above some threshold short of 1, a threshold that is invariant across people and contexts.
See Baker (1987) for a defense of the claim that resilience in the face of counterevidence is a necessary condition for the kind of trust that is essential to close relationships like friendship or marriage.
I am grateful for comments and discussion with Lara Buchak, Trent Dougherty, Dan Howard-Snyder, Jon Kvanvig, Dan McKaughan, and Michael Robinson. This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton Religion Trust. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton Religion Trust.
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