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Irresistibility, Epistemic Warrant and Religious Belief
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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It has been widely argued that beliefs in general are not under direct voluntary control. It is not the case that we can by decision of the will (however construed) decide what to believe or what to refrain from believing in many ordinary instances of believing. Doxastic voluntarism now seems a dubious doctrine at best, regardless of how emphatic Descartes and other traditional epistemologists seemed to be in their support of the doctrine.
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page 425 note 1 See Alston, W. ‘Concepts of Justification’, unpublished manuscript, pp. 6–11Google Scholar, for the clearest statement to this effect. See also Williams, B., ‘Deciding to Believe’, in his Problems of the Self (Cambridge, 1973), Pp. 136–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 425 note 2 I have in mind the Calvinist epistemology suggested by Plantinga, A., Wolterstorff, N. and others. See esp. Faith and Rationality, ed. Plantinga, A. and Wolterstorff, N. (Notre Dame, 1983).Google Scholar
page 425 note 3 See Chisholm, R., Theory of Knowledge, 2nd edition (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1973), ch.I.Google Scholar
page 425 note 4 See Swinburne, R., Faith and Reason (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar, ch.I for a discussion of epistemic warrant as construed in this latter type of way.
page 426 note 1 An Inquiry into the Human Mind. ed. Duggan, T. (Chicago, 1970), pp. 207–8.Google Scholar
page 427 note 1 I am inclined to think these standards or norms are objective and, though very general, apply to an epistemic agent whether she believes they apply or not. On this point see Plantinga, A., ‘Reason and Belief in God’, in Faith and Rationality, pp. 35–7.Google Scholar
page 427 note 2 On this account, epistemology is thus construed as the search for ‘proper rational procedure’. The coherentist may argue that ‘reflective coherence’ is the proper rational procedure. The reliabilist might argue that the production of beliefs by a reliable belief-producing mechanism is the proper rational procedure. The sceptic in turn argues that there is no such thing as a proper rational procedure and therefore no beliefs are acquired after that manner. Epistemic warrant, in this sense, has to do with the ‘manner of believing’ (i.e. the way in which the epistemic agent acquires her belief).
page 427 note 3 Theory of Knowledge, p. 14.
page 427 note 4 ‘Concepts of Justification’, p. 4.
page 428 note 1 From Plantinga, A., Nature of Necessity (Oxford, 1974), pp. 165–6.Google Scholar It may be objected that beliefs are non-basic actions and therefore freedom accrues to them in accord with the freedom of the relevant basic actions. This seems an unsuitable analysis of belief if only for the fact that the description of the relevant basic actions and context still leaves open the possibility that the relevant belief has not been described. There is an extra component in believing over and above any other action the agent performs.
page 429 note 1 I am using ‘not free’ and ‘irresistible’ in a roughly synonymous fashion since both are descriptive in this context of particular actions performed by an agent.
page 429 note 2 Let me illustrate this by looking at a closely related example in another normative context. In most cultures it is believed that one always ought to keeps one's promises. Morally speaking, if one promises to do xthen he has an obligation to do x. We, however, suppose that if circumstances arise which prevent him from doing x, it would be permissible for him not to do x. If Jim promises to meet Sally on Saturday morning then Jim has an obligation to meet Sally on Saturday morning. Supposing, however, that Jim is in a car accident on Saturday morning on his way to meet Sally. Further suppose that the accident is caused by a drunken driver and Jim is completely without fault in the accident. Jim is taken to the hospital and is near death, incapable of voluntary movement. In this case it would be appropriate to say that Jim's obligation has been overridden. His failure to keep his promise now becomes morally permissible in light of the circumstances.
I want to contend that in the game of believing the situation is analogous in relevant respects.
page 429 note 3 I do not want to suggest that epistemic warrant is reducible to moral permissibility. Both concern actions and obligations but markedly different kinds of actions and obligations. I am inclined to agree with the argument of R. Firth to this effect in his ‘Are Epistemic Concepts Reducible to Ethical Concepts?’ in Values and Morals, ed. Goldman, and Kim, (Boston: D. Reidel, 1978), pp. 215–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 429 note 4 One objection needs to be mentioned at this point. The preceding account seems to have the consequence that if someone is brainwashed to believe p (or otherwise unnaturally forced to acquire belief p), her belief would therefore be epistemically warranted and this seems obviously false. The agent may be morally permitted to believe p but her belief would not be rationally warranted. The simple response would be to add a condition stipulating that rational warrant is conferred only in those circumstances where one's epistemic faculties are working naturally and properly. This condition would not be met in the brainwashing counter-examples (and related counter-examples such as the notorious evil scientist stimulating the brain in the vat) and therefore rational or epistemic warrant would not be conferred. In ordinary instances of perception where the epistemic faculties are working properly in this condition would be met and it may still be the case that the belief is irresistible. As a result, the belief would be warranted in those cases.
page 430 note 1 I sense that a full-blown Christian epistemology might want to argue that motives in this sense may actually interfere with belief in God due to the noetic effects of sin.
page 430 note 2 I do not want to give the Lockean notion that the mind is a blank tablet imprinted by impressions. Surely it is the case that beliefs will be a function of the complexity of mental faculties and environmental conditioning. What appears as an orderly message to an American may appear as mere scribble to a Japanese. Nonetheless there remains an irresistibility in the acquisition of beliefs for both – even though the irresistibility results in different beliefs.
page 431 note 1 See Wolterstorff, ‘Thomas Reid on Rationality’ in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, ed. Wolterstorff, N., Hart, H. and Van der Hoeven, J. (University Press of America, 1983)Google Scholar, for further clarification on this notation of epistemic faculties as sources of belief.
page 431 note 2 See Chisholm, R., The Problem of the Criteria (Milwaukee, 1973)Google Scholar, for a defence of this particular reaction to the sceptic.
page 432 note 1 This notion is borrowed from Thomas Reid. It is spelled out in some detail in Wolterstorff, N., ‘Thomas Reid on Rationality’.Google Scholar
page 432 note 2 The project of assessing how the belief in question stands sensitive to the evidence has not been addressed. I am inclined to think a reply along similar lines to those sketched above applies to this problem.
page 432 note 3 For example due to the foundational nature of the belief in God.
page 433 note 1 Two tentative suggestions as to the nature of this ultimate justification. It may lie in eternity or it may lie within the conscience of the unbeliever recoverable only within a conversion-type experience.
page 433 note 2 I surely do not want to claim that these grounds for doubt will inevitably convince the non-believer in and of themselves. This is so because there are more than epistemic reasons which are important to the game of believing.
page 433 note 3 If the above account is accepted, the apparently contrasting strategies of Calvinist epistemology (Plantinga and Wolterstorll) and that of classic natural theology (Butler, Paley, and Warfield, etc.) need not be construed as mutually exclusive for these reasons.
page 433 note 4 I would like to thank Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Richard Foley and Kelly Clark for their comments on parts of earlier drafts of this paper.
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