3.5 Critical Thinking and Religious Belief Flashcards

Clifford and Critical Thinking

• Critical thinking presupposes not being gullible and thinking for oneself.

• Clifford argues for sticking to the evidence and turns this into a moral imperative.

• Clifford's principle: "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence" (p. 295).

  • Implications:

    • Duty of investigation.

    • Agnosticism when there's insufficient evidence.

    • Potentially no religion.

Overview

• Two philosophers defend religious belief against Clifford:

  • William James (late 19th/early 20th C.).

  • Peter van Inwagen (contemporary).

• Takeaway: Critical thinking sometimes means going beyond the evidence.

• Etymology of 'agnosticism': ‘a-’ = ‘without’ and ‘gnosis’ = ‘knowledge’ (Greek).

William James - "The Will to Believe" (1896)

• Leading Question: What does the title of the paper suggest?

• Clifford's principle applies sometimes, but James argues it's not a universal claim.

• James says it is sometimes justified to believe without evidence. Clifford's principle only works when:

  • The choice between beliefs is not forced.

  • The choice is not momentous.

  • The choice is decidable by the intellect.

Not Forced

• Agnosticism is an option.

• Example: Two physicists debating string theory; one can stay out of it without sufficient evidence.

Not Momentous

• No time pressure and/or not hugely important.

• Example: String theory again doesn't require immediate belief.

Decidable by Intellect

• Includes empirical/sensible evidence.

• Example: String theory again.

Preliminary Conclusion

• Clifford’s principle certainly applies to scientific theories!

When Clifford's Principle Doesn't Apply

• Some decisions are forced, meaning one can't be agnostic.

  • Example: Deciding if someone will be good to marry; saying 'I don't know' is like saying 'no'.

• Some decisions are time-sensitive; one can't wait for the evidence.

  • Example: Jumping out of a building and hoping a mattress is there.

• Some decisions are momentous and must be made before the evidence is in.

  • Examples: Having a child, taking a new job.

• Some decisions can't be decided by intellect.

  • James: Moral questions “cannot wait for sensible proof”, and “pure intellect cannot decide” the truth of moral matters…

• Sometimes investigating affects the answer.

  • 'Do you like me?' example: asking can change the response.

  • [police investigation/questioning implies they’re onto you…]

Beliefs Can Be Self-Fulfilling

• Beliefs can create their own evidence.

  • Date/job interview example: Do they like me? If one worries, they're nervous, and they don't like you. If one assumes they do, one is confident, and they do.

• Recall: one should be exactly as confident as the outcome is likely.

  • This principle may be more plausible in 'objective' situations where attitude/belief doesn't affect the outcome.

• Many people believe that if you want/will something badly enough, it will “manifest” in reality.

• Remember the placebo effect?

When Intellect Can't Resolve the Question

• When the intellect cannot resolve the question (evidence insufficient), and the choice is forced and/or momentous, James says: let the emotions/passions choose.

• You can have the will to believe!

Religion in James's Framework

• Religion is forced because agnosticism amounts to skepticism/non-belief.

• Religion is momentous because it can frame one’s life, plus heaven/hell.

• Religion can’t be decided by intellectual or empirical evidence because the existence of God, miracles, the afterlife, etc., lie beyond detection.

• James concludes: one can justifiably choose religion based on emotions/passions.

• You can be justified taking a leap of faith!

James on Religion

• Religion offers itself as a momentous option. We gain by belief and lose by non-belief.

• Religion is a forced option. We cannot escape the issue by remaining skeptical.

• It is like a man hesitating to ask a woman to marry him because he wasn't perfectly sure she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married someone else?

Skepticism

• Skepticism is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error, that is your faith-vetoer's exact position.

• He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.

• To preach skepticism to us as a duty until 'sufficient evidence' for religion is found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true.

• It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law. And by what, forsooth, is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?

James's Refusal

• I, for one, can see no proof; and I simply refuse obedience to the scientist's command to imitate his kind of option, in a case where my own stake is important enough to give me the right to choose my own form of risk.

• “If religion be true and the evidence for it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher upon my nature (which feels to me as if it had after all some business in this matter), to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the winning side,-- that chance depending, of course, on my willingness to run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the world religiously might be prophetic and right.

Irrational Belief

• Is it irrational to believe something without sufficient evidence?

• James: No. “A rule of thinking which would.. prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule.”

• Suppose God exists/religion is true, but there’s no evidence. Then Clifford’s rule would have us not believe the truth.

• Knowing the truth and knowing that one knows the truth are distinct.

• Letting one’s emotions decide when there is insufficient evidence is not irrational.

Two Imperatives

• Two imperatives that sound similar:

  • Believe truth!

  • Avoid error!

• Clifford: We should avoid error. But what if by being agnostic we miss out on the truth?

• James: It’s an emotional decision whether to risk being wrong for the sake of being right.

• When Clifford says “Better go without belief forever than believe a lie!” he merely shows his own private horror of becoming a dupe.

• Clifford is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories either over enemies or over nature gained. Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things.

• Sometimes we must take a leap of faith; we choose to believe.

Peter van Inwagen: “Quam dilecta” (1994)

• Leading discussion questions:

  • Why do people disagree?

  • What explains why there is (so much) disagreement?

  • Suppose everyone abided by Clifford’s principle, that it is always wrong to believe without sufficient evidence. Would there still be disagreement?

One Hypothesis

• There’s so much disagreement because not everyone’s an expert.

• Some people don’t have sufficient evidence yet they jump to conclusions.

• If only people followed the experts (who have sufficient evidence), there wouldn’t be (so much) disagreement.

Disagreement Among Experts

• PvI: Yet there is widespread disagreement amongst experts in many fields.

  • Philosophers disagree with each other (about free will, knowledge, etc.).

  • Physicists disagree about e.g. string theory.

  • Many political scientists/economists etc. disagree about politics and policy (e.g. is capital punishment or military buildup an effective deterrent for crime or war?, does cutting interest rates help GDP?, etc.).

  • Archaeologists might disagree about what an artifact is…

  • Widespread disputes about morality… (right and wrong).

Disagreement About Religion

• Is disagreement regarding religion any different than disagreement in other areas?

• People assume religious belief uniquely fails to live up to Clifford’s principle (whereas, they think science, philosophy, politics, and morality accord with it).

• PvI calls this ‘the difference principle’.

• But is the difference principle justified?

• PvI says no. Why?

Clifford on Religious vs. Scientific Testimony

• Religious experiences are private; not observable or verifiable to anyone else.

• Someone’s testimony that a religious belief is true is not reliable.

• Religious testimony does not count as evidence for religious belief.

• Believing religion because of testimony violates Clifford’s principle.

• Scientific experiments are public and so verifiable (reproducible, replicable).

• The testimony of a scientific expert (authority) regarding the results of an experiment is reliable (credible).

• Scientific testimony does count as evidence (including for laypeople).

• Believing science because of expert testimony accords with Clifford’s principle.

Disagreement Between Experts

• What about the disagreement between experts (in philosophy, archeology, politics, economics, etc.)?

• Should I take their testimony as evidence?

• How can I believe what the experts say if experts disagree?

• How can I justifiably believe anything if experts disagree?

PvI's Options

• I like to think of myself as a pretty good philosopher. I have certain philosophical beliefs, yet other philosophers disagree with me. I give arguments they’re wrong, but they don’t accept them (and vice versa)

• Two options here:

  1. Despite reading/thinking about the same (publically available) books/ideas/arguments/evidence, someone has a private or incommunicable insight into the truth that others lack.

     • If so, then a private or incommunicable thought or experience could be a kind of evidence (it’s what convinces me I’m right).

     • If so, then a religious experience being private or incommunicable could be evidence after all.

  2. OTOH, if no private experience provides evidence, then it must be that there’s disagreement because everyone violates Clifford’s Principle.

     • (there’s disagreement only because people go beyond the public evidence).

     • If so, the “Difference Principle” would be false.

     • (religion doesn’t violate Clifford’s principle any more than anything else)

Reconstruction of van Inwagen’s Argument

1. “Either sufficient evidence is just public evidence that would persuade any rational person who is able to properly assess it, or it can include other things, such as an incommunicable insight into the publicly available evidence.

2. If sufficient evidence is just public evidence, then no one lives up to Clifford’s Principle with respect to most of their beliefs (e.g., philosophical, political, historical, scientific, etc.), in which case it’s hypocritical to attack religious believers for failing to live up to it.

3. If sufficient evidence can include other things, such as an incommunicable insight into the publicly available evidence, then we have no reason to think that religious belief can’t be justified.

4. Therefore, either it’s hypocritical to attack religious believers by failing to live up to Clifford’s Principle, or we have no reason to think that religious belief can’t be justified. (From 1-3)”