Truth has always been especially important to me but I’ve come to realize that I had only valued it superficially. Obviously this is demonstrated by the fact that I never critically examined the underpinnings of my faith, but it is perhaps more apparent in that I never stopped to consider how one might best discover truth in the first place. From what I can tell, I simply defaulted to common sense. If something seemed to consistently meet expectations, then it was probably true, or at least close enough. If people were sharply divided with rational but contradictory views, then the truth was probably found somewhere in the middle. Now that I have begun to unearth my philosophical foundations it has been interesting to see that my approach to truth hasn’t changed much. The difference is that for the first time in my life I can explain what I’m doing. I have carved a path to truth and no topic is off limits.
This post is a continuation from Part 1, where I explored my epistemic roots; that is, how I acquire the evidence that informs my beliefs. Here, I hope to build upon that understanding to see how I might go about discerning truth.
Belief
In those difficult conversations where I revealed to others that I felt that I could no longer defend the Christian faith, I discovered what appeared to be a common misconception about the typical way in which we form our beliefs [1]. The statements of others would often infer that I had made a decision; that somehow I had willfully chosen to discount my beliefs. I tried to explain that this transition wasn’t a choice, that it was simply the unintended outcome of seeking truth, but I’m not sure how often I was successful. I think that unless you have experienced it for yourself it is difficult to understand how somebody’s entire worldview can make a dramatic shift without intention.
So what is belief? Philosophers call it a “propositional attitude”. Perhaps this is more clearly understood as “a feeling about the truthfulness of a proposition”. Either way, you can see that there is nothing here about making a choice. Instead, beliefs are described as feeling and attitudes. It is usually the case that we do not think that we can choose how to feel, only how we respond to those feelings. So it is with belief. I can choose to keep my foot on the brake when the light turns green and insist to others that the light is still red but that does not change the fact that I perceived a green light and understood this to be correct. My belief is that the light is green but my actions defy my belief.
Most would agree that our beliefs are primarily by-products of the evidence we encounter. We acquire various forms of data and then with each new piece of information, poof, out pops a belief. Even when presented with a proposition that is entirely new and unique to us, our past experience of similar data leads us into a feeling about the truthfulness of the new proposition. We form these beliefs without even trying. Regardless of how this belief making machine works (a topic for another time), there is still an open question: when is a belief justified by the evidence? That is, when is a belief worth believing?
Justification
Justification is the process, or the output, of examining the reasons for a belief. The definition of belief which I gave above included a “feeling of truthfulness”. As I noted when I described intuition, this feeling of truthfulness can exist prior to, and even without, awareness of a robust justification. It is still possible, however, to stop, reflect and attempt to explain the foundations of the belief in question. Going through the process itself might even change your belief. That is the process I examine here.
External Corroboration
Working from the foundational reality developed in part 1, which asserts that I am one of many thinkers in an external world, I am inclined to think that there may be no better way to establish the reliability of evidence than through the corroboration of other thinkers. It is the only solution with the potential to overcome subjectivity and expand our data set beyond the narrow slice of the world that we experience. The mechanism of corroboration is clear and simple: compare your description with other descriptions. If they match, then the reliability of the evidence is bolstered. If they don’t match, then the reliability of the evidence is diminished.
Beyond this simple comparison, the value of external corroboration is heavily influenced by the independence of the data. There are many ways by which the division between two or more subjective experiences can be blurred by a set of common preconceptions, motives, conditions, suggestions, et al. Corroboration carries the most weight when it is clear that the observers are not biased into obtaining the same or similar data. For the same reason, corroborative justification is also strengthened by the addition of more corroborators. The strength of corroboration is in its power to overcome subjectivity.
Induction
Corroboration offers a solution to the problem of not knowing whether our own experience is reliable, but what are we to do when corroboration is unavailable or insufficient? This is a problem we solve on a daily basis. More often than not, our interactions with the outside world are not corroborated by somebody else. Instead, we regularly assume that the past can be viewed as generally representative of the present. This is how we operate by default. David Hume could find no rational justification for this assumption but I contend that this is not sufficient to discard our dependence on induction. Not only in the now, but also in the past, we have found that prior experience is an effective guide to current and future experience. So induction, by induction, seems reliable. Sound circular? It is, but I have no reason to believe that its circularity renders it useless. It has a proven track record and so I shall pragmatically accept it as a generally useful method of justifying my beliefs.
Even so, my acceptance of induction needs further qualification. A single observation, or a small number of observations, do far less to justify belief than do multiple observations. The weight of induction toward supporting a belief is correlated with the depth and breadth of inductive experiences. This is simply Stats 101; we should try to minimize our sampling error.
Analogy
It is likely that when we acquire new information we will observe similarities with other information and then use this relationship to build or reinforce beliefs. For example, you may have inferred that the subject of the picture on the right is David Hume; a belief that you almost certainly would not have formed were it not for the resemblance to the picture above. This is perfectly valid, though certainly not always reliable. It is not difficult to imagine cases where the inference from analogy would lead us astray.
As with other forms of justification, the strength of the support that an analogy lends to a belief is dependent on more than just the mere presence of similarities. Key factors also include:
- Frequency: Inferences made between many data sets that share common traits are usually more reliable than inferences made between fewer data sets.
- Congruence: Inferences made between data sets that share many common traits are usually more reliable than inferences made between data sets that share fewer common traits.
- Proximity: Inferences made between experiences that occur close in time and space are usually more reliable than inferences made between experiences that are distant in time and space.
Intuition
Can intuition itself contribute to the justification for our belief? In my discussion of intuition in part 1, I argued that intuition is predominantly a by-product of our experience. It has been well documented that the reliability of specialized intuition is improved with the accumulation of specialized experience. However, most of us also observe that our expectations are more likely to be met when those expectations arise from a belief that is supported by the evidence at hand. This is not only an introspective conclusion but it has been demonstrated experimentally on numerous occasions. The fallibility of our intuitive behavior relative to behavior which results from slow, methodical reasoning is well established. That said, we also recognize that in the course of reasoning we are sometimes unable to recall the information which has shaped our intuition. It appears that intuition may be able to clue us into something that lies just beyond the grasp of our memory.
So where does this leave us? In my view, yes, intuition can help inform our justification for a belief but we must be extremely cautious in doing so. We must recognize the supremacy of reasoning through readily available evidence and only allow intuition to inform the justification when (a) alternative evidence is lacking, and (b) we recognize that we have a wealth of experience which has shaped our intuition (specialization). Even then, intuition should not supersede or overrule evidence which offers clear and immediate feedback, nor should it be allowed greater influence. Furthermore, when we recognize the shortcomings of our evidence we should also seek to fill the gaps before defaulting to intuition. In the end, intuition is a tool of last resort for the purposes of justification. We successfully rely on intuition throughout the course of our daily lives but justification is not the domain of snap judgements, and that is where intuition is best employed.
Defeaters and Falsification
So far I have only discussed how evidence can be used to support a belief, but that is only half the story. Evidence can also be used to defeat a belief; that is, evidence can be used to show that a particular belief is not reliable. Philosophers seem to particularly enjoy lobbing defeaters back and forth. Defeaters are the missiles in the arms race of ideas. The scientific world has a corresponding notion for defeaters. Karl Popper felt that the problem of induction was insurmountable and needed to be formally addressed. To that end, he introduced falsification, which has become a key tenet of modern scientific inquiry. The premise is actually quite simple: use the evidence to build your theory and then do your damnedest to tear it down. If it survives, then your theory is solid. If it fails, then you need to revise.
Both of these concepts – defeaters and falsification – are very powerful. It takes only one example to tear down or remodel erroneous claims of truth. A belief cannot be justified when a valid defeater stands in the way. We simply cannot overlook and push aside those evidences which clash with our beliefs. Unfortunately, I fear that this happens far too often. Certainly I was not exempt, nor am I still. We are deeply invested in our beliefs and making a change is difficult and painful. But if it is truth that we seek, we must be willing to accept defeat.
Contextual Integrity
Information almost never comes to us in isolation. The data we acquire from books, web sites, videos, etc… all carry far more than a single soundbite. Even in our everyday sensory experience we are bombarded with information from multiple senses covering multiple points in space and time. It turns out that all of this extra information can be useful in assessing the reliability of any one part of the data. When we read an article, or a chapter, or a book, we can form many beliefs, each based on evidence from a small part of the content. The justification of that belief is largely dependent on the reliability of the evidence. The reliability of the evidence can be informed by the reliability of the entirety of the content from which the evidence was extracted. In short, the rule is that data which is coupled to other reliable data is itself more likely to be reliable, and data which is coupled to other unreliable data is itself more likely to be unreliable.
On that note, I’m compelled to consider the role this plays with non-empirical evidence. It seems extremely common for non-empirical data to have contact with empirical data. It may be that it includes claims which can be investigated empirically, or that it directs us toward specific interpretations of information that can be investigated empirically. We simply cannot ignore these points of contact. They are more often than not our best windows into evaluating the reliability of data which cannot be examined by any other means. For an excellent critique of how this applies to Christianity, I encourage you to review “Christian Agnosticism & Touching Earth” at jerichobrisance.com.
Testimony
Many of our beliefs are formed in large part on information that has been communicated to us by another thinker without us ever having experienced it for ourselves. The fact that this information is devoid of personal experience does not, however, restrict us from evaluating it with the same tools that I have already laid out. The information contained in testimony is subject to the same criteria to which we hold other evidence. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. There is an added wrinkle to contend with.
Whereas external corroboration can help us strip away the layers of subjectivity, testimony adds them on. Furthermore, we often have no way of personally investigating the claims. A cloud of doubt looms large over testimonial evidence. As I see it, there are some key defenses against these shortcomings. First and foremost, we can call on external corroboration to help us peel back the layers of subjectivity. This is perhaps the most important validation we can apply to testimony and is a primary reason why the scientific endeavor is considered so trustworthy. Scientific publications which have not been subjected to peer review are essentially disregarded. Another defense against the subjectivity of testimony is to evaluate both the historical and contextual integrity of the source. The evaluation of the contextual integrity was discussed in the previous section. The evaluation of the historical integrity is just a particular type of induction. It involves simply looking at the track record of the testimonial source and using that to inform the veracity of the new data. If prior testimony from this source has proven reliable then new data is also more likely to be reliable. If prior testimony from this source has proven unreliable then new data is also more likely to be unreliable. These tools, together with all the other methods of justification, can go a long way toward saving testimonial data from the subjective uncertainty that it inevitably bares.
The Absence of Evidence
It is often said that the “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. In other words, we cannot prove that something did not exist or occur simply by pointing to the lack of evidence. This can be true, particularly for testimony of historical events, but there are also many situations for which the absence of evidence does count. We can appeal to induction and analogy to define the evidence that we should expect and then see if it exists. For example, if somebody tells me that New York has been demolished by a giant lizard and then I go to New York and see that everything is just the same as it was before, then the absence of destruction serves as a solid defeater for the belief that New York was demolished by a giant lizard.
The problem is that we eventually encounter a point where the claim infers less evidence than we can reasonably acquire with sufficient certainty. When the expected evidence becomes impractical to discover, the absence of evidence loses all power. However, when that threshold is reached we notice that the claim itself has also most likely lost its power because it can no longer offer a justification. To assert that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence is, more often than not, also an admission that a claim is lacking in evidence.
Investigative Balance
Though it sounds like a Fox News tagline, my discussion would be incomplete if I did not address the balance of the evidence used in a justification. When our beliefs first form, it is often the case that we have no control over the scope of the evidence that formed those beliefs. If we truly want our beliefs to be justified, however, we need to make an effort to ensure that the evidence is balanced. Even so, we need to distinguish between absolute balance and proportional balance. If our research has uncovered a body of evidence for which 90% favors a particular view, while 10% favors another view, it may be inappropriate to pursue a 50/50 balance by intentionally blinding ourselves to further evidence of the 90% while seeking out only further evidence for the 10%. In this attempt to be fair, we may in fact be injecting an artificial bias. The problem, however, is that we don’t know what we don’t know. We cannot foresee the actual balance of evidence that exists and so we are left with only one solution: gather as much evidence as is practicable from as many diverse sources as is practicable and proceed from there. The measure of practicality will of course vary for each person and situation. The key is only that we make an intentional effort to acknowledge and acquire data from multiple viewpoints. It is the best we can do.
Making the Case
The evidence does not stand on its own. It is rarely sufficient to simply present the evidence as the sole support of a belief. Instead, once we have gathered all the evidence and established its reliability, we need to assemble everything into a coherent explanation. Reasoning is at the core of this process (see part 1 for a more extensive review of logical reasoning and its different forms). We must take the time to reason; to identify and consider the relationships between the evidence, evaluate the relative strength of separate evidences and look for the causal connections between the data. We must be able to tell the story that traces through all of the evidence to arrive at a belief. This is the step that completes the process of justification.
I could say a lot more on this. I could outline the basic structures of argumentation, how to use premises to arrive at a conclusion and I could discuss all the different logical fallacies that we need to avoid; but I’m not going to do that (though I strongly encourage you to review them for yourself if you are unfamiliar). Those are all certainly relevant and important to the process of justification, but it seems to me that they boil down to one idea: an argument turns sour the moment it claims a level of certainty that is not actually supported by the entirety of the evidence. Arguments needs to account for all of the available evidence and weigh the relative strength of the evidence.
The determination of an evidence’s strength is tricky. In laying out the various ways we can assess the reliability of evidence, I intentionally called attention to their contribution toward an increase or decrease in the reliability of a belief. I deliberately avoided language that would imply that justification would lead to absolute certainty. This tells you a little something about my view of truth.
Truth
In the previous sections I looked at the ways in which we can justify our beliefs. Now I must confront the relationship between justification and reality. What does it mean for a belief to be accurate? It is usually the case that beliefs are formed because they appear to match reality. Justification is itself our best attempt to correlate beliefs with reality. But how can we ever be certain that our beliefs truly do match reality? To be blunt, it seems that we cannot. When all is reduced, we are ultimately reliant on our own sensory experience (which is both limited and fallible) and on corroboration by other thinkers (where both their sensory experience and the transmission of their thoughts to us are both limited and fallible) to justify our beliefs. Absolute certainty, it would seem, is doomed.
Pragmatism, not post-modernism
What I am suggesting here is not the view that many would associate with post-modernism, a philosophical view in which we are inescapably mired in an uncertain world of subjective truth. Rather, it seems entirely possible to me that there is in fact absolute truth and that we can form beliefs which are thus true. It may not always be easy to justify those beliefs, and new information may alter our beliefs, but that does not mean that we cannot attain truth – it simply means we should openly acknowledge that our current set of beliefs might be wrong and that we should be willing to accept new evidence and new justifications, even if that means our beliefs might change. Truth is experienced as more of a journey than as a destination, even if the destination really does exist.
There is an important distinction between acting as if we cannot hold true beliefs and acting as if we cannot be certain that our beliefs are true. Of course, we are now meandering into the question of how we respond to our beliefs, which is a whole new topic, so I am going to end this part of the discussion with a brief endorsement of pragmatism. It seems that there is little value in dwelling on uncertainty. Rather, value arises from the consequences of the actions we take in response to our beliefs. When our beliefs are sufficiently justified and turn into to actions toward fulfilling an expectation, and that expectation is consistently met, then our belief was successful. I don’t see why we need anything more than that.
As an aside to those who are compelled to raise the problem of quantum indeterminacy against this view, I respond by noting that an expectation need not be deterministic; it is perfectly possible for one to hold an expectation that something behaves in an undetermined (but probabilistic, in this case) way.
The scales of truth
We gather evidence, we form beliefs and we justify those beliefs with explanations of the evidence. If only it were that simple. The variety of evidence and differing interpretative explanations can be overwhelming. As a result, we encounter conflicting beliefs while at the same time acknowledging the value of their justifications. What are we to do? I have now come full circle. In my introductory post I outlined a prescription for my truth seeking journey which involved collecting data and then considering the conclusions about that data from both the Christian worldview and the naturalist worldview. By definition, I have immersed myself in conflict. There is little value in assessing the relative merit of each worldview by examining the areas where they agree. If I have dedicated this journey toward resolving those conflicts which are waring in my mind then I must have some way to deal with this problem.
As I have suggested, it is apparent to me that our beliefs not only have content but also weight. Some beliefs seem especially true, some especially fragile, and many fall somewhere on the spectrum between. It also seems as if these weights are generally proportional to the breadth, depth and quality of the justification. From this I conclude that the best way to resolve conflicting beliefs is to, as best one can, carefully consider each belief on the virtue of its justifications and then “measure” its weight (this measurement is, of course, subjective even though we are trying to be as objective as possible). It is important to note that this is not an unjustified measurement (aka intuition) but rather a measurement which takes full accounting of the entire justification. Once each belief has been weighed, we can then compare the weights against each other and use this to decide which is most probably true. Some comparisons will decisively favor one view over another. Some will send us cautiously in one direction. Some will leave us caught in the middle of a tug-of-war. So be it. As new data comes in we update the justifications, reassess our weights and reevaluate our measure of truth; ad infinitum.
This is my process, my epistemology and my guide to truth.
The unexamined life is not worth living. – Socrates |
The truth shall set you free. – Jesus of Nazareth |
As a result of the discussions with unkleE in the comments of this post I have revised the language of the “Belief” section to allow for the possibility that we can sometimes choose our beliefs. In philosophical terms, I find “Indirect Doxastic Voluntarism” to be feasible but am skeptical regarding “Direct Doxastic Voluntarism“. The further caveat to this is that I suspect that this is a rare occurrence and that in nearly all cases we do not make intentional choices with a goal of acquiring a belief that we do not currently hold.
“There is an important distinction between acting as if we cannot hold true beliefs and acting as if we cannot be certain that our beliefs are true. Of course, we are now meandering into the question of how we respond to our beliefs, which is a whole new topic, so I am going to end this part of the discussion with a brief endorsement of pragmatism. It seems that there is little value in dwelling on uncertainty. Rather, value arises from the consequences of the actions we take in response to our beliefs. ”
I agree with this quote and generally I like the way you went ahead and tried to plow through your basic epistemic views. I did this a bit in my blog as well.
Thanks. I’ll have to take a look at what you’ve done. I think this is one of the more valuable exercises that I’ve gone through so far on this journey and I would recommend that everybody take the time to do this at some point in their life. I suspect that the vast majority of people don’t know why they believe what they believe.
“In those difficult conversations where I revealed to others that I felt that I could no longer defend the Christian faith, I discovered what appeared to be a common misconception about the nature of belief. The statements of others would often infer that I had made a decision; that somehow I had willfully chosen to discount my beliefs. I tried to explain that this transition wasn’t a choice but I’m not sure how often I was successful. I think that unless you have experienced it for yourself, it is difficult to understand how somebody’s entire worldview can make a dramatic shift without intentional action.”
Hi Travis,`I think there is some misunderstanding on both sides here.
Part of the misunderstanding is caused by multiple meanings and unclear definitions. Belief in philosophy is indeed “a feeling about the truthfulness of a proposition”, but we sometimes use it in the sense of trust or confidence (“I believe in you”). So I think sometimes christians might wonder about how a former christian lost confidence or trust in God. They would possibly understand that you found evidence which change your belief in the philosophical sense, but they might wonder why your confidence in God didn’t see you over that difficulty, much like we may trust a friend even when they do something to shake that trust, because of the friendship.
I’m not saying it was that way with you, but I’m just illustrating that some of these words have shades of meaning. And this leads me into my main point.
I think, contrary to what you say, that we can and do make decisions which determine our beliefs. I just think the decisions come a little earlier than the final loss of belief. It is like an alcoholic who agree to meet his friends down the pub, vowing to only have a lemon squash, but ends up getting drunk. He possibly had little choice by the time he had the drink that set him over the line of being sober, but he did indeed have choices further back in the process.
So what we read, who we choose to believe, how much we check out different viewpoints, our innate wishes (which we may be only dimly conscious of ourselves sometimes), how much slack or time we give God, how much we react emotionally to people who offer strong opinions or even strong emotional reactions to things we say, the nature of our former christian belief (whether it was intellectually respectable, whether our experience of it was good, etc), how much time we give to evaluating issues, how much we are willing to trust our own assessment of what God ought to do (the basis of many doubts), etc – all these and more can be choices we make that lead us down certain paths and help determine our final belief.
So unless we think all those choices were just as forced upon us like you say about your final belief, then we do indeed have a choice about what we believe, it just comes at the beginning of the process. By the time we get to the end, we may indeed have no choice, but our belief then is the result of choices we did make.
So some christians find the difficulties compelling and cease believing, some don’t find them so compelling, or are willing to give God the benefit of the doubt, and keep believing.
A small aside: if naturalism is true, then it is doubtful that we have any real choice about any of these things – our reactions are determined. If this is so, then all choice is illusory, and your choice to disbelieve is just as determined as my choice to believe. All your investigation is post hoc reasoning, just as is all mine. Only if naturalism isn’t true do we genuinely have those choices.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. There’s little here that I disagree with but I do have a few comments:
The key, which makes all the difference, is that these choices aren’t aimed at arriving at a particular belief. If they were then I think it’s probably fair to say that the belief was effectively already in place. I don’t think you meant to infer that we should avoid adversarial viewpoints – clearly you don’t agree with such an approach – but one could take this sentiment as an indictment that a loss of faith is one’s own fault for allowing themselves to explore outside of the bubble. On several occasions my attempts to explain my journey included a statement to the effect that “if Christianity is true, then that is what I will find and my faith will only be stronger for it”. I stand by this. My goal is not to experience a change of scenery. My goal is truth.
I agree with the gist of this but I’m not convinced that this matters much in our day-to-day activities. It may have larger ramifications for social policy, but that’s a whole other topic.
Hi Travis, just a couple of points:
“one could take this sentiment as an indictment that a loss of faith is one’s own fault for allowing themselves to explore outside of the bubble.”
I don’t know if I’d want to say “fault”, but perhaps “one’s own doing”, and certainly not for exploring outside the bubble, but for making assumptions and choices that had consequences be nudging us towards an outcome. We all do it, but we need to be careful. And it means our final belief may be inevitable given our earlier choices, but it may not have been inevitable given different choices.
“if Christianity is true, then that is what I will find and my faith will only be stronger for it”. I stand by this. My goal is not to experience a change of scenery. My goal is truth.”
I agree with this and admire it. CS Lewis (one of my strongest influences when I was younger) said (words to the effect) that if we find God and truth diverging, we should follow truth – for we’ll find that was where God was all along. I often quote that and I have tried to live by it. And of course, if there’s no God we’ll find that too.
Thanks.
Eric,
I am not comfortable with some of the underlying tones here. This is approaching territory that I would consider “intellectually dishonest”. We cannot make any assumptions up front that one outcome is closer to truth than another and so tailor our behavior to favor a particular outcome. This, of course, applies to all sides. Just as the theist is being intellectually dishonest to disregard critical and adversarial sources (or to only approach them with the intent to debunk them), the unbeliever would be equally dishonest to disregard apologetic sources (or to only approach them with the intent to debunk them). Perhaps you are simply suggesting that we need to be careful not to have imbalance in our sources, and with that I can thoroughly agree – see the Investigative Balance section in the post above. I think that if you peruse my reading list and the blogs I am following you will find that I am trying to maintain balance. If you think I am not, then call me out.
Hey Travis, I think we are misunderstanding each other here, and I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable. You see “underlying tones” and seem to think I’m criticising you, which isn’t the case – I said I admired your approach, and I intended no underlying criticism.
My comments are directed against the proposition you put forward about “a common misconception about the nature of belief” that “this transition wasn’t a choice”. I wanted to make the point that we do indeed make choices that help determine the final choice. An assumption that science is the only way to know things biases our final conclusion just as much as an assumption that the Bible is inerrant truth. A choice to read and trust author X rather than author Y likewise has implications. An assumption that God must behave in such and such a way likewise may lead to conclusions one wouldn’t come to without that assumption. And, it seems to me, what we focus on has an enormous impact on final belief – if we focus on, or give greater weight to, the problem of evil we’ll end up in a different place than if we focus on the fine-tuning of the universe.
So unexamined assumptions and choices about what we give attention to and what we don’t are choices which have an enormous effect on our final belief. And I think these realities make your original statement about the nature of belief not entirely right.
But I didn’t anywhere in that refer to you personally, and I wasn’t thinking of you personally when I wrote about those things (or now) – I don’t in fact know enough about you to make such a statement even if i wished to do so. I was making the general point. I’m sorry if you thought otherwise.
Best wishes.
Eric,
When I said that I wasn’t comfortable with your statement I was speaking philosophically, not personally. No harm done. By saying that I wasn’t comfortable I was trying to convey that your statements hinted toward advocating an approach which selects sources based on a preferred outcome. I really doubt that this is what you intended but it came across that way to me.
While it’s true that our choices will determine the information which influences our beliefs, I’m skeptical that there’s ever any intentionality toward a change in belief except when the outcome is unknown (e.g., we just want to know the truth and aren’t sure what it is). That is, I don’t think that we can sincerely hold belief A (a known belief) and then make decisions with the goal of holding belief B (a contradictory known belief). We can make decisions with the goal of holding an unknown belief that is still to be determined, but if we make decisions with the goal of holding known belief B then I think that, if we’re honest, belief B is already the most plausible option for us. That’s a bit of a convoluted explanation so I apologize if it makes no sense.
Hi, I’m glad we’re all OK about that then thanks.
I wasn’t actually asserting intentionality, nor denying it for that matter. I was just pointing out where I believed choice occurred in forming a belief. But I think this may sometimes be intentional and sometimes not. People try to be honest, but we all have biases, so we choose viewpoints and emphases. Sometimes the bias is unconscious, sometimes I think it is deliberate. We feel a pull towards a certain viewpoint and justify it via our choices.
This isn’t just in God related questions, but in all parts of life. In fact some psychologists (e.g. Jonathon Haidt – see Rational thinking is over-rated?) think that most of our decisions are made intuitively and then sometimes justified rationally later. (I have also written on this in Why do people believe or disbelieve? What would it take to change your mind (or mine)?.)
Not sure if we’re saying the same thing here, but my point remains that our belief is often (generally?) effectively decided long before we become aware of it or decide to change. I have laboured this point because I have found it commonly said by atheists that we cannot just decide what we believe, and I am arguing that we can and do, it just happens earlier than they (and I think you) may think.
Thanks again.
Hey Eric,
I think we’re actually saying very similar things. Almost everything you’ve said here is in line with my perspective. The point of contention appears to be centered around intentionality. When you say that “I have found it commonly said by atheists that we cannot just decide what we believe, and I am arguing that we can and do” I take “decide what we believe” to clearly infer intentionality toward a particular belief. In other words, it suggests to me that we can take actions with the goal being an identifiable belief state that we don’t already hold. My contention is that if you are taking those actions then you have already crossed the line to acceptance (or rejection) of that belief. The actions which took you to that point, however, were not intended to achieve that state of belief.
With respect to the work of Haidt and others, I’m in agreement that this is often how our rationalizations operate and I think it’s important that we recognize this. The fact that we often perform post-hoc rationalization isn’t the end of the story, however. There is also a feedback loop where the reasoning process itself also influences the “feeling” that we call belief. This seems pretty self-evident to me. We regularly reason through a belief or idea and come out on the other side with a different belief than we had going in. Given that our beliefs can be heavily influenced by the processing of information, it makes sense to me that if we want our beliefs to be accurate then we should process lots of information all the while aware that there may be biases at play which we should actively try to mitigate to the best of our ability.
I want to revise something I said. I think it actually is possible to make intentional choices that lead to the adoption of a particular belief that is not currently held. This process, however, relies on a commitment to imposing deliberate constraints over our informational influences across very long time periods until the old perspective has faded and the bias has saturated our consciousness to the point of acceptance. That said, I suspect that this is extraordinarily rare. This kind of commitment is typically a consequence of belief, not a precursor. So, under our normal mode of operation I think that my prior assertion holds – that we do not intentionally act with the goal of accepting a known belief that is currently not held.
Trav, I’m away for a week, just got internet access in a public library, so will reply in a few days.
Hi Travis, back again from a very enjoyable brief holiday in Tasmania.
“we can take actions with the goal being an identifiable belief state that we don’t already hold. My contention is that if you are taking those actions then you have already crossed the line to acceptance (or rejection) of that belief. The actions which took you to that point, however, were not intended to achieve that state of belief.”
I think we are in agreement about a number of things, but there are some important things I think are still unclear. I sort of agree with your statement here, but I think it oversimplifies. If we take the case of a former christian giving up their belief in God and Jesus and christianity, then there isn’t just one step from belief to disbelief, but (most likely) a series of steps – perhaps (1) loss of belief in an inerrant bible, (2) loss of faith in certain authors and teachers, (3) loss of belief in the Old Testament even as history, (4) loss of belief in the gospels as history, (5) loss of belief in Jesus as divine, (6) loss of belief in the God of christianity, and finally (7) loss of belief in any God.
This process isn’t inevitable. Many people go through 1-3 but stop there and stay “progressive christians”. Some go to 6, but stay theists or deists, etc. So there are many complicating factors in your simpler statement, for example:
A choice of how to conclude on a particular aspect may not intentionally lead one to #7, but may intentionally or unintentionally bias a particular step along the way.
For a christian, belief is a combination of evidence and trust (just like my marriage relationship is). Loss of belief can be caused by a new perspective on the evidence or loss of trust. Some of us trust more than others. Some of us base our trust on a particular view of the Bible or a particular teacher, and throw everything away if they prove unfit for that level of trust, but others only throw away that part of their belief system, not the lot.
How we decide on some of those 7 steps may well depend more on our attitude than on the facts. Say we looked at #4. You and I could have the same good understanding of the facts, but conclude oppositely, as indeed competent historical scholars often do. Why? it can’t be the facts themselves, because we both see them the same. I suggest it is likely our attitudes. For example:
(i) The person who loses their faith may likely focus on the problems about some details, whereas the person who keeps their faith may not worry about these relatively minor discrepancies because they have already rejected inerrancy.
(ii) Many arguments against God come down to “If God was really there and loving, he would do X.” A person who accepts such an argument and thereby loses confidence in the existence of God is really basing all on their ability to understand and judge what God might or might not do. One person will have the self confidence to make that judgment, while another will give those arguments less weight because they don’t have such trust in their ability to understand God’s motives. I think this may be what Jesus said about accepting the kingdom as a little child – not that we abandon our brains, but that we abandon some of our self confidence (perhaps our hubris).
(iii) Much argument on the internet is emotional, manipulative, puts pressure on by scorn, ridicule, overstatement, sheer falsehood, etc. Some people are very affected by this. (I am pretty strong minded, but I remember when, at an atheist friend’s request, visited the Why Won’t God Heal Amputees website, and was hit like a tsunami by the scorn and ridicule. It was fortunate I had been taught well by CS Lewis to stop at times like this, analyse the arguments, ask myself had any facts actually changed, and work the issues through methodically. When I did, I decided it was mostly hot air and nastiness. But many people may not react this way, and they will either retreat into their fundamentalist shell or collapse in an agnostic heap.
So I say again that I think the (de)conversion process can be complex, emotion-driven, and random to some degree, but our choices still guide where we end up. I think we can and do choose our beliefs, but the process isn’t simple.
Dunno if that adds to the discussion, but I hope so. Thanks again.
Thanks Eric. There’s no doubt that the path to belief formation is complex and involves a wide variety of factors. I’m not sure I see much in here which hints at intentional choice to go from one belief to a known competing belief. Introspectively, I just can’t see how that is possible except by realizing that we wish something to be true and then taking steps to intentionally direct our environment and influences until the belief changes “on its own”, so to speak. It seems that this kind of intentionality commonly occurs after the fact, as a way to reinforce a belief but I suspect that it is very rarely employed as a way to intentionally change beliefs.
I’ll also point out that we have been treating belief in a very black and white manner, which is not at all how it seems to actually work. The borders between belief, doubt, agnosticism and disbelief are extremely fuzzy. A “change in belief” is difficult to quantify, which is why I have preferred trying to translate the strength of belief into probabilities. Hopefully that makes it easier to communicate.
By the way, this discussion has introduced me to a new term, “doxastic voluntarism”, which is the proposition that we have voluntary control over our beliefs. There’s quite a bit of philosophical discourse available on the topic if you haven’t already discovered it yourself. It seems that most contemporary philosophers deny doxastic voluntarism but I think I would agree with a variant that is commonly called “indirect doxastic voluntarism”, which is essentially the exception that I noted above. I think that perhaps this is also the perspective you argue for but that we may disagree on the frequency and extent to which people do this with the intentional goal of arriving at a particular known belief.
Hi Travis,
Thanks for the reference to doxastic voluntarism – I hadn’t heard the term or read about it before, so I have briefly looked it up. I was thinking maybe our discussion had reached some sort of terminus, but this reading has opened up some new ideas. This is good. So I hope you don’t mind my continuing a little further.
A few random thoughts from this reading:
Atheists and freethinkers make much of Clifford’s Principle (“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.”), but if we cannot choose our beliefs, then this is inapplicable, probably nonsense.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy suggests a second principle: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to ignore evidence that is relevant to his beliefs, or to dismiss relevant evidence in a facile way.” That principle fits with our discussion, in that I argue that one reason why people like you and I can come to different conclusions is that we choose to look at evidence differently (Indirect doxastic voluntarism – IDV).
I thought the examples used here were a bit simplistic. Of course there are some beliefs which it is hard/impossible to will oneself into (e.g. believing USA is still a colony of UK) – because we know too many facts against the belief. But even then, what about an optical illusion? There are many visual illusions which seem obviously one thing, until and if you can tweak your mind to see the “truth”. So if you tell me it is an illusion, I might believe it even if all my own senses say otherwise.
I thought the best discussion was in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I haven’t read it all, nor understood all that I read, but the broad lines of argument are there. I will reference two arguments here for now.
(i) The Classic argument against DDV discusses someone coming to a view about whether LH Oswald killed John Kennedy. It is meant to show that DDV is false, but I think it shows the opposite. For a start it distinguishes between forming a belief and concluding a proposition is true, whereas I would say the two are the same. But in coming to a conclusion like who killed Kennedy, one has to consider many different and contradictory facts, many different hypotheses and conspiracy theories. One’s final conclusion will clearly depend a lot on whose judgment we respect most, how we weight the facts, etc. I personally could go either way on this question, there is no compelling case either way, so surely I am choosing my belief?
(ii) The argument for DDV about Sue, Sam and the book seems quite convincing to me. In this case belief is about trust, not so much about facts, and surely we can choose to trust someone or not? Trust is a delicate balance and relies on intuition as much as facts. Do we not make choices about who to date, who to marry, who to trust, which are partially based on trust, partially on intuition and partially on attraction, etc? And it is the same with God for a christian.
So this very limited but helpful reading leads me to a few conclusions – I’d be interested to see where you agree and disagree.
(a) Choosing belief depends on whether we can choose anything. Determinists cannot choose belief, or anything else, in any meaningful sense.
(b) We come to and hold our beliefs for a wide range of reasons – sometimes we couldn’t choose anything else the facts are so clear or our emotions so strong (IDV), sometimes the facts are unclear or it is a more personal matter and we have to choose between options (DDV), for complex decisions there are factors which are determined in either way and it is a mixture of both.
Thanks so much for this discussion. It is rare to find someone who disagrees with me yet can express this courteously and constructively, offer new sources of info and ideas, and so help to develop my views. You have done that here, and I really appreciate it.
Hi Eric,
I’m glad this discussion has opened the door to some useful reflection. Here’s my take on some of the thoughts you’ve shared:
I’m not sure this actually matters much to the question of doxastic voluntarism. Regardless of where one stands on free will, we agree that we engage in something called “choosing”. This phenomenon is universal whether we think it is performed by a ghost in the machine or it is just another cog in the chain of prior causes. Our view on this will shape our understanding of what is happening under the surface, but we can still talk about choice at the conceptual level.
I don’t see how the conclusion “surely I am choosing my belief” follows. Can you explain?
I’ve encountered examples like those given for DDV in my readings on pragmatism. This goes back to my comment about the “fuzziness” of belief. In the example, is Sue choosing to hold a belief, or is she just imposing an attitude onto her uncertainty? I note that the examples for DDV (and pragmatism) involve a high degree of uncertainty and a sort of cost-benefit analysis on how to act. I question whether belief should be treated as if we can only be in two states. “I don’t know” and everything on the spectrum in its vicinity seem like legitimate states of belief. I am generally in agreement with pragmatism, that it makes sense to operate as if a certain proposition is true for the sake of the benefit. We could call this “choosing to believe” but there’s something distinctly different about it. One clear distinction is that these cases tend to reference the future, or “how things will be” and the examples raised against DDV tend to reference the past, or “how things are”. Introspectively, I find that belief about things that have happened versus things that haven’t happened are qualitatively different. They are also very different scenarios with regard to the role that evidence plays. I would suggest that the question of worldview – what is the nature of reality – falls primarily into the latter, the “how things are” camp.
“I’m not sure this actually matters much to the question of doxastic voluntarism. Regardless of where one stands on free will, we agree that we engage in something called “choosing””
But whether we choose our beliefs is the question I originally took up with you. You said: “I tried to explain that this transition wasn’t a choice” and I disagreed. I believe we do make choices. It doesn’t seem to me to matter whether someone denies choice because they are determinists or are doxastic involuntarists (??), the result is the same. Where do you sit? Are you a determinist, a compatibilist, or something else?
“I don’t see how the conclusion “surely I am choosing my belief” follows. Can you explain”
I think for this discussion, we have to assume free will is possible, otherwise DDV and IDV are both impossible, for nothing can be truly voluntary. But assuming that, there are some decisions where I can “freely” choose (e.g. when offered a drink at a party, will I choose Coke or orange juice?) and some where I cannot (I cannot make myself believe that I am a bat). The difference between the two cases is caused by (1) whether the matter is one of truth or taste, (2) how important the decision is, (3) how strong the evidence or reasons are for one choice over another, (4) how difficult the evidence is to assess, and maybe more.
The cases we are discussing (believing in God, believing Oswald killed Kennedy, etc), are (1) matters of truth, (2) important, (3) we can all come to different assessments and (4) the evidence is very complex to assess. I think (1) makes it harder to make a “free” choice”, but (3) and (4) make it unlikely that we are “forced” to a conclusion. If we are not forced to a conclusion, but on similar evidence each choose differently, and people from time to time change their minds (i.e. convert or deconvert), this suggests to me that choice is involved – even though the importance of arriving at truth may make some people feel “forced”.
That’s what I meant.
“Sue choosing to hold a belief, or is she just imposing an attitude onto her uncertainty?”
Are these alternatives really different? Or, more accurately, isn’t imposing an attitude one of the ways we arrive at belief?
“I note that the examples for DDV (and pragmatism) involve a high degree of uncertainty and a sort of cost-benefit analysis on how to act. I question whether belief should be treated as if we can only be in two states. “I don’t know” and everything on the spectrum in its vicinity seem like legitimate states of belief. I am generally in agreement with pragmatism, that it makes sense to operate as if a certain proposition is true for the sake of the benefit. We could call this “choosing to believe” but there’s something distinctly different about it.”
I think I agree with you here. But isn’t this choosing to believe? One key is uncertainty. We can’t sensibly believe in something we know isn’t true (despite the silly accusations of some atheists), uncertainty is required for choice. To repeat,that is the case re God and the Kennedy assassination.
Finally, an example taken from real life though anonymous. Our assessment of the Bible, and hence of christianity, can be highly dependent on our attitude. If we start from the view that the Bible is inerrant and is either totally true or quite untrustworthy, we can end up being either a fundamentalist (where we refuse to consider the problems in the Bible) or coming to disbelieve it (if we examine the problems and conclude it isn’t inerrant). But if we start from a more neutral viewpoint, that of a historian or anthropologist, we don’t assume the Bible is inerrant, we take it as we would take any other literature of its time, and we find that the NT at least is quite good history and we can reasonably believe it without thinking it is inerrant.
The key difference between the several conclusions is the starting assumption, which focuses us in different ways. That starting assumption may be one we grew up with, but is easily examined and modified if we choose. But so many people are unwilling to try the starting assumption of approaching it historically, and even long-time unbelievers seem unable to let go of the assumption that the Bible (or more particularly the NT) is either inerrant or unhistorical, which leads them to focus on the problems and ignore the positive statements of the historians. This is a classic case of IDV bordering on DDV, in my view.
Thanks again.
Eric,
I don’t think we connected on this one. Everybody experiences the phenomenon of choosing. We have a common experiential definition that everybody can use, regardless of what they think is happening under the hood. If we leave it at the experiential level then everybody can comment on doxastic voluntarism without appealing to the underlying mechanism of choice. Might we be adding too much to the definition if we say that choice is only possible in the absence of determinism? I think so.
As noted above, I’m not sure it matters to the topic at hand but I will honor the request. It seems most likely to me that we do not possess an uncaused faculty. I think that the perspective I offered above would probably put me into the compatibilist camp but it seems to me that those are largely just semantic games. Either there is something uncaused or there isn’t.
I think that the network of influences into belief are far too complex to draw any conclusion about choice from the fact that people arrive at different beliefs from similar evidence. The fact that beliefs sometimes change doesn’t imply anything unless you can show that they changed by choice without any external influence, which is highly dubious.
I don’t know, I guess it depends on where we draw the line between hope and belief. Is deeply hoping for an outcome the same as believing that it will occur? I can tell you from experience, an experience which is echoed by just about every deconversion story I have read, that there was a period where the loss of belief was deeply conflicted with my hopes and desires. It is a stressful and difficult state to be in. In that case it seems that it is belief which has hopes and desires in tow, rather than the other way around. I don’t care much for the perspective which asserts that I have misinterpreted my experience and have it backwards.
I agree that this is a false dichotomy. I find myself in agreement with much of Dale Allison’s work, who sees a balance between the extremes (I highly recommend Constructing Jesus, if you haven’t already read it).
Hi Travis. Thanks for this discussion. I think it may be time to ease down.
We have discussed choice and while I have learnt from the discussion, I don’t think we fully understand each other. I think your comments about determinism and about “the network of influences into belief are far too complex” are enough to make your initial statement about not choosing unbelief either irrelevant (if determinism) or claiming too much certainty (re the network), but I haven’t persuaded you of that, you haven’t persuaded me to your view, and I don’t think further discussion will resolve this.
“I don’t care much for the perspective which asserts that I have misinterpreted my experience and have it backwards.”
I have “met” enough former christians on the web to know that many really struggled with where they were beginning to think, so I don’t question that in you. I’m sorry if you thought my comments were aimed at suggesting otherwise, for I was speaking generally, not to your experience (which I know little about). But like you said, there is a complex web of wishes and emotions and fears and assessments of truth. Not every factor will influence every decision. I observe many people struggling with faith and doubt seem to treat their eventual destination as inevitable, and I don’t think so, neither do I think wish fulfilment necessarily works only one way. But again, I speak generally.
Anyway, thank for a very pleasant discussion, I suppose there may be more in the future. Best wishes. Eric
Hi Eric,
This discussion was certainly productive. For what it’s worth, I made some updates to the post so that the paragraphs on belief don’t exclude IDV. You may be right that we can’t grasp each others’ perspectives on choice, but it has inspired me to try and explain it further. I’ve started drafting a post toward that end.
That condition isn’t disingenuous and doesn’t betray an inner desire to reach that eventual destination. It’s a reflection of their inner conflict, where the evidence points one way and their heart points another. I have been there. It is very hard to imagine the heart winning out over the head but you still hold out hope that you had the truth all along. I expect that this is the sentiment that they are perhaps failing to articulate.
I agree, but it seems possible that you have misinterpreted people’s desires when they express inevitability, as I have noted above. It isn’t wish fulfillment. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. It’s despair at the realization that their wishes are unlikely to be fulfilled.
Hi, I’m glad it has been helpful to you as it has for me.
I wasn’t inferring that feeling the outcome is inevitable is disingenuous. Only that I think it is choices that often make the difference, so the result isn’t necessarily inevitable, even if it feels like it.
I don’t think I have ever shared my experience. I live in Australia, which is far less “christian” than the US. My parents weren’t believers, didn’t attend church, gave us no religious instruction, but they sent us to Sunday School, because it was the “correct” thing to do. From there I went to youth group and when I was 16, in my final year of school and first year of university, I decided I believed that christianity was true. But I didn’t want it to be true because that would interfere with my “ownership” of my life (not that I was doing anything desperately sinful, just being an ordinary teen). So for a year or more I thought intellectually it was true but refused to commit myself to making it my belief and acting on it. So this was in a sense the reverse of the experience you are describing. I think I had emotions and wishes, fears and feelings, and I think they all had some effect on my path, but I still had choices to make. So I think I have some understanding of all this. Perhaps I have misinterpreted them, but perhaps you have thought I was saying more than I actually was.
Best wishes.
Hi Travis,
Occam’s razor to reduce cognitive dissonance is expedient but the only truth discovered is that naturalism is simpler to believe than traditional Christianity. Working backwards, while the razor was sharp, was expedient, but when contemplating ultimate origins, it is quite dull. For instance, the steady state universe was once the simplest explanation of origins until a Genesisesque big bang was discovered.
BTW, your material would make an excellent book.
Best,
JL
Hi JL,
First, thank you for the kind words. Regarding the relationship between Occam’s razor and truth, the razor has been stated many ways but I find that it is best expressed not as favoring the simplest explanation but rather as favoring the explanation with the fewest assumptions, all else being equal. This means that it needs to fit all of the data and then introduce the fewest additional complexities. You are correct that this does not guarantee truth, but I fail to see a better option. Furthermore, I am inclined to suspect that there is a probabilistic rationale behind Occam’s razor. I still have much to do to understand that topic further, but intuitively it makes sense that in a Bayesian analysis of competing explanations, the least complex will produce the highest posterior probability. This may or may not be what is formally stated by Solomonoff’s theory of inductive inference. As I said, however, I need to dig in much deeper before I would be comfortable making any claims along those lines.
It is perhaps true that the steady-state universe would have been favored by Occam’s razor prior to discovery of the evidence which led to big-bang cosmology, but I do not see that this was a methodological error. If anything, it was a loosely held hypothesis based on extremely limited evidence and much speculation. It was a best effort given what was available. Is there is a better option?
Finally, I’ll note that I am not sure whether Genesis infers creation ex nihilo. I have seen that Genesis 1:1 may be an introductory summary to the creative efforts that start with a “formless and void” earth in verse 2 and continue until the second version of the creation story in 2:4. Apologists have laid claim to ex nihilo creation in light of big bang cosmology but it is not as obviously biblical as they would like us to believe. Again, however, this is a topic that will need further attention before I can hope to make a judgement with any weight.
Thanks again for the compliments and for weighing in. I just may have to make it my next research project to investigate the possible application of Bayes to Occam’s razor.
Hi Travis,
Applying Occam’s razor to “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth” and “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” certainly seems to yield creation ex nihilo as needing the fewest additional complexities. In any event, when reasoning forward, all we have is “extremely limited evidence and much speculation” to form what should be loosely held hypotheses, whether materialist or spiritualist.
Hi JL,
As I stated before, the question of creation ex nihilo is not one that I have sufficiently studied, but I will suggest that the proposed application of Occam’s razor does not account for all of the contextual data (e.g., the potential relationship between Genesis and Enuma Elish) and it assumes these those sentences define actions rather than serving as introductory summaries for the subsequent verses, even though Gen 2:4 in fact very much appears to be an introductory summary. If those verses are summaries and none of the other verses imply creation ex nihilo, then perhaps creation ex nihilo isn’t the best fit of the data. This has gotten a bit off into a topic that I’m not prepared to discuss much further, but that is nevertheless the possibility that I am allowing – that perhaps creation ex nihilo is not as deeply ingrained in Genesis as we may have been led to believe by the apologists.
While I agree that we are often limited in our evidence I also see that there is a continuum. There is much which would require nearly unimaginable counter-evidence to dislodge, and much which seems firmly grounded even if it is not impervious to revision. Skepticism is a useful tool for the purposes of discrimination between possibilities but it can also be wielded so fiercely that it leads us into an abyss of relativism and nihilism or idealism – none of which seem to have any realizable value. That said, if your intent was simply to praise the habit of holding an open mind and constantly reevaluating our positions in light of new evidence, then I am in whole-hearted agreement.
Thank you for your contributions to the discussion.