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Faith and the Structure of the Mind

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Abstract

Faith, broadly construed, is central to the political, social and personal life of any rational agent. I argue for two main claims: first, that a typology of faith based on the fine-grained Indic categories of bhakti, śraddhā, prasāda, abhisaṃpratyaya and abhilāṣa (each of which I explain) dissolves many of the philosophical problems associated with the nature of faith; second, that this typology of faith has elements that cannot be encompassed in a belief-desire psychology. The upshot is that the structure of the mind is more complicated than belief-desire psychology admits and that understanding the nature of faith has a role to play in charting the structure of the mind.

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Notes

  1. Quoted in Swinburne (1981/2005: 139).

  2. The secular analogue of śraddhā is viśvāsa.

  3. While Rotman’s analysis of prasāda makes much of gift giving, I think this emphasis is misconceived. This is because, as Rotman (2008) notes, there are cases of prasāda that have nothing to do with any gift-giving—what is central, rather, is the mental state of prasāda.

  4. See Dennett 1978 for an early statement of such a view.

  5. These two claims are how Price (1965), in his classic discussion of belief, reduces evaluative belief-in to belief-that, i.e. to a propositional attitude. I reject his analysis.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to the anonymous referees of this journal and Ramdas Lamb, Kritika Yegnashankaran and Bronwyn Finnigan for their written comments on an earlier draft. A version of the paper was presented at a conference —“On Faith: the Transformative Possibilities”—organised by the Patna Collective, and I’m grateful for the feedback I got there. Thanks toMattMacKenzie for his encouragement and help.

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  1. Ashoka University, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Kranti Saran

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  1. Kranti Saran
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Saran, K. Faith and the Structure of the Mind. SOPHIA 53, 467–477 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-013-0403-z

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