Pooh's Think

This entry is a continuation of the last post Faith vs. Reason, Part 1.  These two entries come as a pair.

 

Dispositionalism

Again, dispositionalism is the view (Schwitzgebel’s proposal in any case) that a belief just is the right sort of cluster of stereotypical dispositions – behavioral, cognitive, and phenomenal (‘behavioral’ includes the disposition to verbally affirm the belief “that P”). However, on my interpretation of the dispositionalist theory, a mild incoherence is forced since our conception of the stereotypical dispositions is dependant on referencing the belief in standard linguistic form: the “belief that P”. 

 

The grammar evidences this.  While the theory holds that the stereotypical dispositions just are the belief, the theorist is left asking if this or that disposition is stereotypical “of the belief” in question. But the cluster of stereotypical dispositions cannot be the belief and at the same time be of the belief, since ‘of’ locates behavior that we expect to follow from the belief “that P.” These expectations result from our innate sense of practical rationality, not from what we take a given belief to be. Otherwise, so I claim, we have no way of deciphering whether a disposition was a genuine deviation from the stereotypical dispositions of a given belief. And so it seems we are stuck pointing to the linguistic “belief that P” as a necessary reference point before we can begin any discussion of  the theoretical “belief” that just is the stereotypical dispositions.

 

This, I think, is the only way to understand Schwitzgebel’s statement:

 

Does Ellen believe that all Spanish nouns ending in ‘a’ are feminine? Some of her dispositions accord with that belief. (260)

 

Are some of Ellen’s dispositions just “that belief,” or are they the sort that “accord with that belief”? In Schwitzbegel’s story, Ellen thinks that the proposition “all Spanish nouns ending in ‘a’ are feminine” is true. But her behavior suggests that she does not take this as true, since she speaks Spanish well, which includes the use of non-feminine nouns ending in ‘a’. “that belief” is identified with Ellen’s taking the world made true by “all Spanish nouns ending in ‘a’ are feminine” as the actual world; the dispositions either accord or don’t accord with that belief. 

 

Here Schwitzgebel makes the linguistic statement, “the belief that P,” the standard, which only seems right to me. There has to be a linguist anchor. Otherwise we are just talking about behavior and not belief behavior. We are especially cut off from belief behavior when we reference merely the skill of a language user. If Ellen can speak her native language fluently while having very little ability to verbally express beliefs about that language – such as grammar rules – then we should think that Ellen’s knowing how to speak a language does not require, in principle, beliefs about that language to begin with.  I would want to argue, for instance, that Ellen does not give evidence to any belief whatsoever when she expresses her ability to speak Spanish well. The only relevant belief we know she does have is a false one. What we mean by ‘belief’ must therefore be something other or at least something more than dispositions.

 

My Proposal

On my view, believing in its most primitive form cannot be separated from believing that. (Hebraic belief/faith, which is not tied as directly to statements of fact, is what I take to be a higher level, less primitive form of commitment).   Belief ascription is short hand to describe our behavioral dispositions and to describe the behavioral dispositions of others; it is a simplifying reduction rooted in language. We do not in reality perform action V because of desire X and belief Y. Human behavior is, thankfully, much more complicated than that; the social psychologist will remain a delightful mystery to herself, and to a lesser extent, others. On my view, this is true in part because we do not have something as simple as a belief Y in the first place. It just helps to talk about ourselves and others (as well as worms, fish, and bacteria) as though it were that simple.   

 

Our use of the word ‘belief’, rooted in the form believe that, is grounded in conscious judgment. When I say that I believe that P, outside a more formal profession of belief, I am simply expressing that I am convinced of the truth that P. ‘I believe’ that P means that I take as true that P. I am not attempting to make any forecast about my behavioral dispositions; I might hope that I act according to this belief, but I know that I have this belief one way or the other right now. I do in fact believe that P. There might be in-between cases where I am not sure that I believe that P, or complex cases where I am self-deceived as I judge that that P is true. But this does not force any change in what we mean by ‘belief’ – just the opposite. If I am going to address these complicated scenarios, I must already have a fixed, primitive idea of what it means to clearly and fully believe.  

 

On the most rudimentary use of ‘belief’ as applied to others, I am simply ascribing the same to someone else.  Ellen believes that P means Ellen takes that P to be true. Ellen takes as true the statement “all Spanish nouns ending in ‘a’ are feminine.” Only after settling that Ellen believes that, or takes as true that “all Spanish nouns ending in ‘a’ are feminine” can we then judge whether Ellen’s dispositions accord with the statement “all Spanish nouns ending in ‘a’ are feminine”.

 

The ambiguity of the word “takes” here shows how naturally we can move between imagining Sally to consciously judge, to take that P as true and imagining Sally to be a person who is disposed to take that P as true.  But saying that Sally is disposed to take that P as true is not to then reduce the meaning of ‘believe’ to her behavioral dispositions. The same is true for character traits.  To say that Sally is courageous does imply a disposition of Sally to be courageous, but this does not mean that ‘courageous’ just is some stereotypical set of behavioral dispositions.

 

Rather, we use ‘courageous’ to refer most basically to acts of courage, e.g. “that was a courageous thing for Sally to do.”  ‘Sally is courageous’ is ambiguous just as is ‘Sally takes that P to be true’. Is Sally courageous because she needs to be recognized for her single act of courage one week ago?  Is Sally courageous because she is right now attempting to slay the dragon?  Or is Sally courageous because I just need some short hand way to refer to the general pattern of acts of courage from Sally? As we work our way towards a dispositional, virtue account of Sally’s courageousness we will be borrowing from, all along the way, our use of the word ‘courage’ while referencing or bringing to mind an event of courage.

 

To say that I believe that P through time whether the thought that P is in my head or not is to say that I am disposed to believe that P. But this is not the way we talk about belief. We do not say that Sally is disposed to acts of courage, but rather that Sally is courageous. Similarly, instead of saying that Sally is disposed to believe that P, we say with perfect ambiguity and efficiency that Sally believes that P. Consider how technical and artificial our philosophical phrase is: “has the belief that P”.  This is not a natural usage of ‘belief’, unless we are stating awkwardly that Sally is of the opinion that P, which is certainly a reference to conscious acts of judgment. 

 

And again, belief ascription is a simplifying verbal shorthand in our attempt to express how we take the world to be, how we formulate an understanding of ourselves, and how we make judgments about our own habits or skills or what it is like to be while walking through a red rose garden in the morning fog. By giving a report of what ‘I believe’ I thereby fix the content of that belief.  As Dennett put it, “The emergence of the expression is precisely what creates or fixes the content of the higher-order thought expressed” (Consciousness Explained, 315).  It is the that P that provides the content for the belief that P rather than the far more complex and mysterious ways we non-verbally take to the world to be or what it is like to be me from time t1 to t2. So this is not a pre-existing content in the head – an unconscious belief that P or, I doubt, a language of thought. It is at the point of propositional conscious judgment in word or thought the that P, the content, comes into existence – and it is there where the existence of the linguistic content must remain. 

 

This does not need to be inconsistent with a fully dispositional account of believing, so long as we understand that the dispositional account pertains to a technical term for philosophical and scientific purposes. To avoid confusion, I suggest we call belief as reference to dispositions D-Belief and reserve Belief for reference to our natural language in which our reference to a D-Belief is grounded. This is my suggestion for all our technical words in philosophy and science (and has been my suggestion for years about technical terms in theology, such as ‘covenant’).

 

Now back to faith and reason. In the case of D-Belief, I am not sure how one could locate any sort of tension between faith and reason. Having the right D-Beliefs could be reduced to having the right habits, the right behavioral dispositions. Whether or not one could articulate beliefs through that P statements might just be beside the point; the important question is whether or not one has the appropriate D-Beliefs as tied to a more general stance, which references verbal behavior as only one small part of the full range of stereotypical dispositions. Consider how irrelevant Ellen’s erroneous belief on grammar is as compared to her ability to speak a language. D-Beliefs are evidenced more in stable habits than verbal report, and they expand and grow firmer with gained experiential knowledge. When we are concerned about D-Beliefs that reference verbal behavior in aesthetic, moral, and religious contexts, one is concerned largely with aptness to situation, narrative context, expressiveness, and social value – concern is given over words that are “seasoned with grace” or rebukes that are fit for the enemy. The ‘truth value’ is of secondary importance.

 

Belief, on the other hand – as apposed to D-Belief – although a direct reference to intellectual activity, the ‘life of the mind’, is very limited on my view stated above. Belief is a simplifying linguistic tool we use to describe the behavior of ourselves and others as well as how we take our own experience of the world to be. Belief falls in line with our simplifying narrative confabulations and our reductionistic theory of actions: Sally did V because of her desire X and belief Y (if anyone knows of a low cost edition of John Bargh’s Social Psychology and the Unconscious, let me know). I do not believe that P until I say or think that P in the right sort of affirming way, thereby creating the content that P at the fashioning of the assertion. And then I go on thinking I believe that P when the conditions that gave rise for my original assertion that P are now largely gone. Charles Taylor suggests something like this:

 

We find the sense of life through articulating it. And moderns have become acutely aware of how much sense being there for us depends on our own powers of expression.  Discovering here depends on, is interwoven with, inventing. Finding  sense to life depends on framing meaningful expressions which are adequate.

 

Belief is therefore what I take to be rooted in a proto-religious faith in our ability to understand ourselves and the world. To say that ‘I believe that P’ is a dabbling in a bit of erroneous dogmatism. It is interesting how the enquiry of the philosopher has the habit of reducing the number of propositions we say we truly believe. There seems to be a tension between belief and reason just where we would least expect and just where we do not want it – just where we cannot have it. So it is here where I just give up my arm chair attempt at locating, philosophically, the tension between faith and reason on the topic of Belief.

 

Our concern about the tension about faith and reason is a very reasonable one, a very sound, practical concern resonating with the intuition of most over many centuries. So where do we turn to address this tension? Before abandoning philosophy proper altogether, I will give three other important topics a try: Metaphor, Narrative, and Knowledge.

Posted by metzler on Saturday, May 2, 2009, at 5:49 pm.
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