In response, Jeffrey Lipshaw offers a critique of Leiter's definition, and attempts to argue against the sensibility of blaming (or not respecting) religious belief for being dogmatic. He takes aim at Leiter's commitment to a principle like the following:
"All beliefs must [should] be revisable in light of evidence and reasons."
(Let's call this the Principle of Doxastic Revisability.) In Leiter's telling, this is the Principle on which religious believing specially fails, and for which religious believing can therefore be blamed. Lipshaw asks and answers: "Is it Leiter's position that [the Principle of Doxastic Revisability] could be revised in light of evidence and reasons? I think not." Lipshaw goes on: "Any exercise in conceptual thinking requires some foundational belief that is both categorical and insulated, for all practical purposes, from evidence and reasons."
With this, Lipshaw means to question something like the Principle of Doxastic Revisability. Put in its strongest form, I think the key move involves making (or trading on) a denial like this:
It is not possible that all beliefs could be held revisable in light of evidence and reasons (because, supposedly, there must be some wholly arbitrary starting point from which to launch the revisionary work of evidence or reasons).
If so, then a fortiori, there can be no basis for criticizing a set of beliefs (like religious beliefs) for failing to be revisable; hence (to make a long story short), shame on Leiter.
On Lipshaw's account, there is, at the end of the day, merely different coherent systems of thought in which, for each system, some arbitrary points will be fixed and beyond revision. But then, again, blame becomes impossible, and the failure to respect becomes unprincipled:
"If we have neither divine voices nor random chance as our practice, but instead a coherent set of concepts in religion or philosophy that cashes out in choosing among conflicting demands for action, why is it any less worthy of respect that one coherent set comes from religion and the other from science or common sense?"
Now, to explain why I think Lipshaw wrong and confused:
Lipshaw is wrong to suppose that "[a]ny exercise in conceptual thinking requires some foundational belief that is both categorical and insulated, for all practical purposes, from evidence and reasons." This "requirement" of insulated foundational belief may be true for any particular "exercise in conceptual thinking," but what reason do we have to think it is true in all cases? It is true, of course, that if we are puzzling over something, our puzzling, if it is to be productive at all, will need to take some things as a given. But such "givens" need only be given then, in that particular instance of reasoning or evidence-giving. At other times, those "given" things can certainly themselves be questioned. It is only for the sake of convenience (and our own practical limitations) that we do not try to resolve all problems all at the same time. And so, yes!- even Leiter's Principle of Doxastic Revisability may be subject to itself. If, for example, Lipshaw could articulate a real reason why the Principle of Doxastic Revisability is not possible, then Leiter would be bound to respond to such reasons in some appropriate way-- either by abandoning or revising his Principle. And moreover, if Leiter dogmatically stuck to such a principle in the face of a strong reason to abandon it, he would surely deserve some measure of blame or loss of reputation. We may all have 'fixed' points from which we reason in some sense, but that does not mean that we all have 'fixed' commitments in the crucial sense of being dedicated to holding those commitments come any (perhaps unknown) reason or evidence.
In other words, Lipshaw hasn't given a reason that the Principle of Doxastic Revisability is false or impossibile. And if it is possible, and if it is true, then it seems like a perfectly fine ground from which Leiter may blame (or fail to respect) dogmatic religious belief.
I think this is enough for the main point, but I am also slightly bothered by Lipshaw's apparent thought that everyone has some crucial element of arbitrariness in his or her beliefs (of the kind that makes every coherent web of belief the equal of every other coherent web).
Undoubtedly, it is true that we all have starting points when reasoning or offering evidence about something, and true also that, for most of us, many of these starting points will remain perpetually unexamined. But do these facts necessarily make those starting points "arbitrary"? In the sense that most of us lack any conscious awareness of the justification vel non of those starting points, yes. But this merely psychological sense of "arbitrary" is uninteresting; what Lipshaw really needs to support a claim that we are all in the same unprincipled boat is something stronger, a sense of 'arbitrary' that means something is not justified, legitimate, or principled at all. And, in this sense of 'arbitrary,' I don't see any reason to think that we are all of us most of the time 'arbitrary' in reasoning or in offering evidence. Lipshaw certainly hasn't offered such a reason.
An illustration: suppose it is the case that the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) is a legitimate, justified, true principle. In what that legitimacy consists, we will not say here; only that it is a legitimate and true principle. Then, in using PNC as a "starting point" or ground in reasoning about something, it does not impugn our reasoning at all to say that our use of PNC is arbitrary in the psychological sense. The reasoning still stands--whether it is consciously appreciated so to stand or not--as legitimate (to some crucial extent, assuming we haven't misapplied PNC). There is no theoretical need here for talk of coherency or webs of belief, no need for epistemological relativism ("each coherent web of belief is the equal of every other"), no need for a pernicious rejection of any idea of legitimacy in thought--which is what epistemological relativism amounts to at the end of the day.
Thanks for sending me an e-mail that you posted this.
ReplyDeleteI think you've overstated my argument, or misstated it, or set up a straw man. I haven't argued that every coherent web of belief is the equal of another, which is the key to your piece (after conceding much of what I said). That would mean that I would respect the belief that Jesus is the sole instantiation in human form of God in the universe, and I said that I don't. Or that Abraham killing his son in the pursuit of blind faith would have been. . .okay. No, I said it would have been evil.
What I said was that the urge to find meaning ought to be respected, and the urge to find meaning in a web of belief has to start with at least one concept that is insulated from reasons and evidence (which you concede). Or, as I said, the concept of that impulse is worthy of respect, even if particular conceptions are not. From there, each web of belief is answerable to criticism, for example, that it doesn't answer to common sense, or experience, or whatever. That's equally true for utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, Reform Judaism or the Tao. My point is and was that I don't see that Leiter has made a principled distinction that cashes out in terms of respect for the first two but not for the second.
For anyone reading these comments, Prof. Lipshaw and I had a long email exchange in follow-up. Here's my last long email:
ReplyDeleteNotice, of course, that I'm not actually defending Leiter's definition of religion as such. You may or may not be right that it is in some ways both overbroad and narrow. I take it that the real issue is the possibility and truth of a principle like (what I have called) the Principle of Doxastic Revisability, since this is the principle by which Leiter proposes to appropriately blame (or fail to respect) religious belief. Your core objection to this principle is that it is impossible that we could hold all beliefs out to be revisable, as the Principle demands.
Schematized hastily from your last emails and your article, your argument on this narrow point runs, I think, like this:
1) We must act
2) In order to act, we must make value judgments ("test concepts for their value")
3) In order to make value judgments, we must have some standard by which to make those judgments
4) In order to have some standard by which to make those judgments, we must have "fixed" beliefs of the sort that are in principle immune from revision (i.e., fixed beliefs of the type-2 sort)
5) Because 4 is the case, then the Principle of Doxastic Revisability is at least false (at worst, impossible)
If this is basically a correct interpretation, our disagreement can be pinpointed precisely. I have no quarrel with points 1-3. (Okay, in some moods and for some interpretations, I may quarrel with 3; but for now, I grant it.) I agree that 5 follows given 1-4. But, crucially, 4 is false, or at least you haven't yet shown a reason for its truth.
Contrary to 4, for example, I make value-judgments all the time that rely upon my having value-standards of one kind or another. But those standards are for me in principle revisable, even if, at the moment of making a value judgment, I don't normally question those principles. (That would be a bad way to proceed in practice.) But if, and to the extent that, you call my standards into question by giving me a good reason to question it, then I take myself to have some obligation engage in the project of such questioning-- that is, to hold that belief out for revision. This may bring my prior value-judgments into question, of course, but that is the risk I am willing to take.
Leiter's view, in blaming religious belief, I think, is that this attitude (of mine) is one that religious people lack; he thinks that the risks which attend holding every belief out for potential revision are risks that religious people are not willing to take. If we are both dogmatic, the religious dogmatism really is of a fundamentally different kind, because their dogmatism would not hold their principles and standards out for revision. There's (in a sense) "fixed" beliefs, and then there's (really) "fixed" beliefs.
I'll grant you that, as an empirical description of religious practice, this description may be rather clunky and imprecise. But surely to the extent that religious (or any other group of) people deliberately ignore reasons to question the standards under which they make judgment, whatever that extent may be, isn't that a worse sort of epistemic attitude which deserves some blame? If so, then Leiter's blaming of religious belief (to the extent that it in fact evinces the wrong kind of epistemic attitude under a Principle of Revisability) might be principled after all.
How about this as a bottom line: the bad kind of dogmatism is the kind that is unwilling to engage with the reason-giving skeptic, when and if that skeptic comes along. In granting Leiter that this is a bad kind of dogmatism (and you may agree or disagree with Leiter that what marks out most religious practice is that it falls under this bad kind of dogmatism), there is no need to find oneself commited to much else at all in the way of theories of truth, objectivity, the nature of moral judgment, the need for moral action, and the rest. Go any way you like on the rest of it, or go no way at all.
Michael, it occurred to me that I disagree with your comment over at PrawfsBlawg that I'm saying we all start with a bit of dogmatism. (Or more fairly, that the notion we have to start with some fixed idea is the equivalent of a seed of dogmatism.) Where I agree with you is that it's what you do from the initial reasoning point that determines whether you have fallen into dogmatism or not. How I come out on this does indeed go back to some epistemology, and I think it's more Kantian than anything in its influence.
ReplyDeleteI would say I'm as much or more an empiricist as to matters in the natural world as anybody. That is, I don't think we can have "knowledge" in the sense of truth statements about pure concepts, whether the product of secular reasoning or religious reasoning. Ascribing truth to pure reason beyond that which can be confirmed by experience does indeed lead to the possibility of dogmatism. That's what Kant calls the transcendental illusion.
That doesn't leave us without resources as to what is right and what is wrong in terms of action, but it does mean that we are going to have to rely on something other than an equivalent to a physical fact as the basis of our morals. I recognize that's MY view (which I share with others), and there is a view that there are moral facts and they supervene on the natural world. By the way, I respect the intellectual coherence of that view, but it doesn't seem right to me intuitively. Kant's view is that reasoning to moral ends doesn't involve truth (the "is"), and hence we can use reason to develop our ends, and not just the means to ends (contra Hume - reason is the slave of the passions, etc.) Leiter makes a comment in one of the papers about being able to count pure Kantian agents on one hand, and he has that right - indeed, he overstates it, because a pure Kantian agent would be God. Kant himself says we never really know whether the end product of our practical reason stems purely from reason or from our physical world predilections. And Kant goes overboard (in my view) in taking categorical views, say, on the primacy of not lying.
Your comments have given me pause to think about a better approach to either religious or philosophical moral reasoning. I conclude tentatively (and am interested in a reaction) that Karl Popper had it closer to being right in his essay at the beginning of Conjectures and Refutations. We want to be open to criticism. We are not obliged to revise every belief, and we can set a very, very high burden of proof. But the key is in our attitude, not in the beliefs themselves. Popper (who by the way was apparently very thin-skinned about criticism of him!) wants us to be very, very careful in elevating anything categorically to the status of authority, whether it is authority of concepts/reason (e.g. Descartes), or authority of experience (Hume). In practice, we see it in paradoxes like, "great teachers are also great learners" or in some of the insights from the Tao - "when great leaders lead, the people say we did it ourselves."
Thanks for the continued engagement!
ReplyDeleteTo wind things back just a little bit, I thought you were rejecting Leiter's proposed Principle of Doxastic Revisability as an impossible principle. (I think you half-agreed at one point in our email exchange yesterday that this was partly what you were doing.) But if, after all, you don't think we all have a "bit of dogmatism" (of the relevant kind) -- more to the point, if you grant to Leiter that there could be potentially relevant differences between religious people and non-religious people vis-a-vis a certain kind of proper epistemic attitude--then your criticism of Leiter loses a certain amount of sting. In that case, Leiter isn't wrong because he has a bad idea of the underlying principles. His principles, or else his Principle of Doxastic Revisability, turns out to be in fine shape, at least if it is interpreted as requiring a certain kind of open epistemic attitude.
I just want to be clear that the discussion really is at this point. Sorry to be stepping back and clarifying instead of rushing headlong into the rest of it.
Incidentally, I'm close to being on board with the rest of it. (Although I tend toward cognitivism as a meta-ethical view.) I like this statement particularly: "But the key is in our attitude, not in the beliefs themselves."
ReplyDeleteI think that's about right.