Abstract
This paper explores religious belief in connection with epistemological disjunctivism. It applies recent advances in epistemological disjunctivism to the religious case for displaying an attractive model of specifically Christian religious belief. What results is a heretofore unoccupied position in religious epistemology—a view I call ‘religious epistemological disjunctivism’ (RED). My general argument is that RED furnishes superior explanations for the sort of ‘grasp of the truth’ which should undergird ‘matured Christian conviction’ of religious propositions. To this end I first display the more familiar perceptual epistemological disjunctivism (PED), contrasting it with both externalist and classically internalist views. This prepares the way for introducing RED with its own distinctive factive mental state operator—pneuming that p. In this second section I present the RED model, not failing to address a potential problem concerning religious disagreement. I also clarify RED’s distinctive internalist aspect, describing how it comports with contemporary internalist thinking in epistemology. I then move in section three to criticize externalist and classical internalist views, showing where they fail to make proper sense of the sort of knowing which should ground mature Christian conviction. Specifically, I highlight three intuitions which I think any theory of religious belief should capture: what I call the case-closed intuition, the good believer intuition, and the Plantingian platitude. This is all to set up for the final section where I argue that RED is superior for understanding proper religious believing—capturing the aforementioned intuitions.
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Notes
For a clear and thorough introduction, see Pritchard (2012).
I’m aware that ‘conviction’ typically connotes nothing epistemically stronger than mere strong subjective confidence—hardly a very demanding epistemic relation. But this is something I mean to correct with respect to matured Christian conviction. I want a conception of Christian conviction on which one is not only strongly confident, but has the right to be confident, because they know after the fashion I’ll describe in this paper. Thanks to Adam Carter to raising this concern.
My characterization of PED follows Duncan Pritchard’s. He conceives epistemological disjunctivism’s ‘core thesis’ like this: “In paradigmatic cases of perceptual knowledge an agent, S, has perceptual knowledge that φ in virtue of being in possession of rational support, R, for her belief that φ which is both factive (i.e. R’s obtaining entails φ) and reflectively accessible to S.” (Pritchard (2012), p. 13).
I do take it that a belief’s enjoying factive rational support is always sufficient for knowledge. Indeed it’s plenty sufficient, perhaps even a kind of epistemic over-kill. It’s at least hard to imagine what further conditions one should like on knowing.
But see French (2014) for alternative ‘thing seeing’ conception.
‘Seeming seeing’ is John McDowell’s label for one’s perceptual experience when it looks to one as if p, but its not a case of p making itself visually manifest, or else it’s not a case of one seeing that p. See McDowell’s (2013) presentation at University College Dublin: ‘Can Cognitive Science Determine Epistemology?’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8y8673RmII.
Goldman (1988) is the principle text here, wherein he identifies reliability with strong justification (which he distinguishes from weak justification—the positive epistemic status shared with one’s radically deceived counterpart).
Accessibilism is a form of internalism distinct from what some have termed mentalism. First to make this contrast were Conee and Feldman (2000, p. 55). It’s not at all clear in the literature how PED relates to various internalist theories—for instance, whether it need necessarily be accessibilist, or mentalist, and then to what degree. I’ll make an effort in this direction when I introduce ‘religious epistemological disjunctivism’ below.
In Pritchard (2012) Duncan Pritchard classifies these as the basis, access, and indistinguishability problems. Consult this same work for ways of answering these problems.
Pneuma is Greek for ‘spirit’. Of course I have in mind here the ‘Holy Spirit’ as He is characterized in orthodox Christianity.
This is not to say that I wish to restrict the class of beliefs which can be pneuma’d to Alstonian manifestation beliefs. In fact I think at times it is possible for one to pneumas some simple biblical teaching, when one undergoes the relevant mediated religious perception of their truth. But exploring these extensions of RED with have to wait for another time.
Alston (1992, p. 67).
Granted, if Madison’s justification is being requested of by a religious skeptic, then to report that she pneumas the relevant fact will be little satisfying. But neither is the external world skeptic satisfied when we appeal to our states of seeing to justify our external world beliefs. In any case, RED is not meant to furnish some argument to think religious belief is true—not unless you like question-begging arguments. Rather, RED is meant to vindicate a conception of religious knowledge, given the truth of the Christian worldview.
Thanks to Duncan Pritchard for raising the objection, and to Adam Carter for requesting the clarification.
See Goldberg (2014).
I have in mind here views stemming from the reformed epistemological tradition; chief adherents including Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. These theorists of religious knowledge argue that sufficient for proper religious belief is that such meet certain externalist criterion. These criterion will differ for different epistemologists—but the hallmark idea is that proper religious belief need not be supported by independent reason or argument, no more than proper perceptual belief need be supported by independent reason or argument.
Plantinga (2000) writes that while de facto objections are ‘objections to the truth of Christian belief’, de jure objections concern ‘arguments or claims to the effect that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or contrary to sound morality, or without sufficient evidence, or in some other way rationally unacceptable, not up to snuff from an intellectual point of view.’ (preface, ix).
Goldberg writes that “even on the concessive assumption that there is a reliable process of revelation, even so, given the fact of systematic disagreement, no one would be entitled to rely on it in belief formation.” Goldberg (2014, p. 297).
Jennifer Lackey has a nice recent summary of these positions in Lackey (2014).
Alston hints at such a parity argument in Alston (1988a, p. 444).
But perhaps there’s a significant difference between actual and mere possible disagreement, such that this line of response looks like special pleading for defenders of religious belief. In particular, you might think that agreement is in some fashion built into the very notion of basic evidence for belief. That is to say, a necessary condition for entities of kind k to serve as evidence or reasons for belief is that there not be wide and systematic disagreement concerning the reality these entities reflect or indicate. This will require a more nuanced response from the defender of religious belief. For example, perhaps there are social epistemological strategies available. The defender of religious belief might hold that our thinking about epistemic support is significantly dependent upon social context. She might reply that RED is meant to elucidate the kind of epistemic support available for religious belief only relative to the social structures undergirding religious practices. Relative to these social contexts, then, there isn’t the kind of disagreement Goldberg needs to run his objection. Thanks to a referee for pushing me more on this point.
Again, Pritchard’s model is presented in Pritchard (2012).
McDowell (2002, p. 280).
Conee and Feldman (2000, p. 47).
Conee and Feldman (2000, p. 47).
Of course I’m assuming here that states of pneuming that p are bona fide mental states.
Or no ‘apperceptive awareness’ that one is in such a mental state.
This distinction between mentalism and accessibilism is one Conee and Feldman themselves drew to help distinguish their particular internalist view.
William Alston calls accessibilist views of the first sort Perspectival Internalism and views of the second sort Access Internalism. (see Alston (1986, 1988b). Michael Bergmann refers to views of the first sort as requiring actual awareness on justification-conferring facts, and views of the second sort requiring only potential awareness. See Bergmann (2006, Chap. 1).
In this connection, Bergmann (2006) distinguishes strong from weak awareness. And Alston distinguishes ‘awareness of the ground’ of one’s belief from ‘awareness of the adequacy of the ground’ of one’s belief. Famously, Alston’s ‘internalist externalism’ gains it’s externalist element in its denial that one need be aware of the adequacy of one’s ground (see, again, Alston (1988b)). In Bergmann’s terms, Alston required only weak awareness.
I leave it open whether the relevant second-order awareness entails knowledge, justified belief or mere belief.
See Bergmann (2006, Chap. 1).
See Alston (1988b).
Bergmann (2006, Chap. 1).
This is merely my conception of RED’s internalist dimension. One might conceive of RED differently—along mentalist lines, or along accessibilist lines which require actual awareness, and/or along accessibilist lines that require only weak access to one’s epistemic situation. I prefer my own conception for reasons I can’t go into here.
Plantinga (1993).
See Brandom (1995). On page 897 he writes that ‘gonzo externalists’ think that ‘issues of justification and reason-giving (…) can safely be treated as globally irrelevant’ to ‘attributions of knowledge’.
Plantinga (2000) is himself explicit about this in the preface, xi.
That is to say, some reason to doubt the quality of the epistemic support one’s belief enjoys. Undercutting or undermining defeaters are typically contrasted with overriding or rebutting defeaters, or reasons to doubt the truth of the proposition one believes.
For an argument along these lines see Neta (2009).
The gonzo or extreme externalist might object here that they are not wholly without resources to make sense of responsible believing. For instance John Greco (2010), himself a kind of ‘extreme externalist’, writes: ‘it seems to me knowledge requires both responsibility in one’s cognitive conduct and reliability in achieving epistemic ends [emphasis mine]’ (p. 43). He thinks that ‘S’s belief that p is epistemically responsible if and only if S’s believing that p is properly motivated; if and only if S’s believing that p results from intellectual dispositions that S manifests when S is motivated to believe the truth’ (p. 43). So it appears that Greco would agree with me that some measure of epistemic responsibility or proper epistemic motivation is required for proper believing, but that he can secure such responsibility on externalist thinking alone. But I wonder how Greco conceives this working out for simple cases of visual-perceptual belief? On Greco’s conception it seems to me that even the most epistemically vicious individual believes responsibly with respect to his visual-perceptual beliefs. For isn’t this individual’s belief the result of a belief-forming disposition which he manifests when motivated to belief the truth? In cases of perceptual knowledge, does the vicious believer not use the same reliable belief-forming mechanism as he does when more virtuously minded? For consider: if this vicious individual were to suddenly acquire a deep desire for the truth, he wouldn’t then exercise any different belief forming process when coming to believe that there’s a cup on his desk—rather he’d use the very same process. It seems that when Greco’s conception of responsible believing is applied to the case of simple visual-perceptual belief, there’s no discernable epistemic difference between a perceptual belief viciously formed and the same perceptual belief virtuously or responsibly formed. I think this is a problem. And this brings out the sense in which I find ‘gonzo’ externalist theories dissatisfying. What gonzo externalists can’t make sense of in connection to the virtuous believer is that she, unlike the vicious believer, is disposed to believe for or in light of good reasons of which she can appreciate. The externalist can’t make sense of this because it’s never necessary for proper believing that one belief in the light of any considerations, at all. There’s a deeper sense of ‘responsible believing’ the gonzo externalist can’t get at, even in principle. And this is the sense of responsible believing I have in mind. Thanks to Kyle Scott for stimulating my thinking on this point.
More generally, the classical internalist I have in mind is any fallibilist internalist. Trent Dougherty (2014) is a good example. He defends a view he calls reasons commonsensism: ‘S has a pro tanto purely epistemic reason to believe that p if (and because) it appears to S that p [my emphasis]” (p. 102). It’s the ‘because’ here that is important for marking my classical internalist. They think that a sufficient explanation why of proper perceptual belief need only make recourse to features of the subject’s perspective which would obtain anyway though what is believed is false. Another example is Huemer’s (2001) phenomenal conservatism: ‘If it seems to S as if P, then S thereby has at least prima facie justification for believing that p’ (p. 99). Or consider Pryor’s (2000) dogmatism: ‘my view will be that whenever you have an experience as of p’s being the case, you thereby have immediate (prima facie) justification for believing p” (p. 532). Or listen to Alston (1992): ‘If one believes that God is P (e.g. loving) on the basis of an experience that one would normally take to involve God’s appearing to one as P, that belief is prima facie justified” (p. 68). Or hear Conee and Feldman (2008): “Suitable perceptual experience is prominent in acquiring justification for any particular perceptual belief. For instance, when the belief is that that is a tree (B1), typically one has visual experiences, E1-En, that consist in visual qualities, some of which are arranged in some treeish fashion, as viewed from some apparent perspective” (p. 91). In so far as these conditions 1) are ‘internal’ to one’s mental life and/or perspective, 2) may obtain independent of the truth of the perceptual belief, and 3) are conceived to sufficiently explain proper perceptual belief, we have my classical internalist. In any case, what makes RED non-classically internalist is that it denies 2) of this triad.
Millar (Millar 2011) argues that knowledge should have this role: that when we have a grasp of the truth we should know this, ‘which is why we can so often responsibly terminate our inquiries and responsibly vouch for the truth of what we have found out’ (p. 70). Millar thinks that unless knowledge that p appreciably merits a close of inquiry whether p, then knowledge does not satisfy the inquirers concern for the truth. Or in other words, then a kind of skepticism ensues.
See Zagzebski (1996). Virtue responsibilism is typically distinguished from virtue reliabilism. While reliabilists conceive epistemic virtues as seated in reliable cognitive faculties or mechanisms, responsibilists would have virtue seated in acquired and enduring traits of character, or person-level dispositions of motivation and (epistemically relevant) action for which one can be held responsible.
My thinking here is guided by McDowell (1998), who writes of fallibilist conceptions of ‘mind reading’ that they ‘yield this thesis: knowing that someone else is in some “inner” state can be constituted by being in a position in which, for all one knows, the person may not be in that “inner” state. And that seems straightforwardly incoherent’ (p. 371).
See Alvin Plantinga’s charge to Christian philosophers in Plantinga (1984).
In May 2015 the University of Vienna held a conference entitled ‘The Factive Turn in Epistemology’. If you’re sympathetic to the idea that only ‘facts, true propositions, or factive mental states can be good reasons for belief’, then you might be sympathetic with this burgeoning movement. See the conference website here: http://the-factive-turn-in-epistemology.weebly.com/.
Thus you might also conceive the “Plantingian platitude’ as a kind of ‘grandmother requirement’ on religious knowledge. That is to say, whatever we think about ‘first-rate’ epistemic support for religious beliefs, such should not be so difficult to obtain that pious granny’s beliefs cannot enjoy it. Thanks to Brian Ballard for a conversation in this regard.
You might wonder whether these arguments might just as well be applied to the visual-perceptual case for arguing for what I’ve called PED (perceptual epistemological disjunctivism). And if they aren’t so applicable, you might then become suspicious of their power to persuade for RED in the religious case. For my own part I think the ‘good believer’ and ‘case-closed’ intuitions apply with equal effect to the visual-perceptual case. In other words, I have problems concerning gonzo externalism and classical internalism about proper perceptual belief as well, and this because such views fail to capture perceptual belief as virtuously formed and case-close from the subject’s point of view (I think I’m sure that there’s a pen in my hand, now; and rightly so—I don’t need to conduct any further inquiry concerning whether there’s a pen in my hand). But I should also say that I agree with the thought that should it turn out that my arguments for RED are unpersuasive as arguments for PED, then this is reason to be skeptical of RED. For I don’t see any features peculiar to the religious case that might suggest that it’s only with respect to religious knowledge that such should capture the ‘case-closed’ and ‘good believer’ intuition while this might remain optional for the case of visual-perceptual knowledge. Thanks to a referee for raising these points of concern.
Thanks especially to Duncan Pritchard and Adam Carter for commentary on earlier drafts, and to the participants of the (2015) Tyndale House philosophy of religion workshop at Cambridge for their incisive comments.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Adam Carter, Duncan Pritchard and an anonymous referee for comments on earlier drafts, and to the conferees of the 2015 Tyndale House Philosophy of Religion Workshop in Cambridge for their incisive criticisms. Also thanks to Brian Ballard and Kyle Scott for good conversation on these topics.
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Shaw, K.J. Religious Epistemological Disjunctivism. Int J Philos Relig 79, 261–279 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-015-9553-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-015-9553-y