Trick Socks and Theistic Belief

Matthew,

I've posted a clarification over at Knowability. I hope it clears things up a bit!

"I think it's safe to grant that if all of the experts on "quasi-perceptual spiritual experiences" told us our beliefs weren't veridical we'd be blameworthy for persisting in the belief."

I'm not sure adding in experts who disagree by itself makes a difference. Suppose another color scientist came along and said, "You know what she just told you about those socks? It's balderdash. I've been trying to make socks like that for years, and I can tell you: it's impossible." In fact, what he says is true, but you're in no position to decide which of the color scientists is right. I'm inclined to think here that you'd still be doing something at least somewhat blameworthy by continuing to believe on the basis of how the socks look that they're blue. At least you would be if you believed it with the same degree of confidence you did before encountering the first scientist. It's not as if now that you've found some disagreement among the experts you're epistemically free to disregard the experts who tell you that your blue-sock belief is false.

It seems to me as if someone sufficiently externalist and reliabilist should consider the opinion of the color scientists to be irrelevant. What makes your belief knowledge is that the socks are blue, that your senses are functioning properly, and that your color perception is caused reliably by the thing that the belief is about.

Bryan - Thanks for the update.

Geoff - To be honest I go up and down on the matter of experts. If one really knows then perhaps they are displaying epistemic courage by standing by their belief in the face of misleading evidence. I'm reminded here of the few fringe scientist who stood by their work in the face of ridicule by the scientific community only to proven right in time. Of course most fringe scientist turn out to be wrong. So, for the sake of this post I'll stick by my original claim.
I do then think that the introduction of expert testimony matters. If there were two color scientists, one of which supported my perceptual experience, I don't think I'd be blameworthy for persisting in my belief. My perceptual experiences are generally very reliable and they've done me well in the past. It does then seem that I'm in some position to decide which of the color scientists is right or at least in a position to choose between them. I agree though that the degree of certainty should be lowered and that one can't simply dismiss the disagreeing expert. At least when the matters in question are of some weight.

Jeremy,

I don't deny that "What makes your belief knowledge is that the socks are blue, that your senses are functioning properly, and that your color perception is caused reliably by the thing that the belief is about". I can agree with all that. The point is that knowledge can be defeated even though the strong externalist principles are all true.

Matthew,

I'm not sure what you're saying. I agree that if the community of color scientists were polled and came down half in favor of my commonsensical belief, while the other half denied it, I would be epistemically a-okay in persisting with my commonsensical belief. But that's very different from the case I described in the two posts.

I also agree that if a scientist knows a bit of controversial science, then he or she is displaying courage in sticking with her belief against majority opinion, say. And she may be epistemically upstanding in doing so. It depends heavily on the details of the case at hand.

I take it you're willing to go along with the blameworthiness in the visual perceptual case I described but deny the inference to the spiritual perceptual case? And the reason is something like this: in the spiritual case expert opinion that I have access to is divided on whether the spiritual experiences I had came from God?

Bryan - I think we're basically in agreement. The point about the split in color scientist was in response to Geoff's comment that introduced such a split. In that case it looks like we agree that one would be epistemically free to maintain their belief.

In the case that you present in your post, I agree that one would be epistemically blameworthy if one persisted in her belief that she’d seen blue socks after receiving the testimony of all of the color scientists to the contrary. In the spiritual case I’m not even sure who is going to count as an expert. So, perhaps if all of the priestly psychologists tell you that you haven’t in fact had a religious experience, then you’d be blameworthy for persisting in the belief. However, the facts on the ground for most of us seem to be more like a case where the expert opinion is divided.

I guess I'm just not big on all this defeating stuff. For instance, I think knowledge of a real barn through perceiving it is not defeated by the fact that there are fake barns in the area. That just seems irrelevant to me. Similarly, I'm not sure how expert testimony that turns out to be wrong is going to defeat genuine knowledge through the right causal process in the usual reliabilist way.

The only way I'm left with to justify saying these cases are blameworthy is if it can be blameworthy to believe something that you know. That sounds way too weird for me.

Jeremy, I don't like the trick-socks example, it's too convoluted for my taste. But there is good reason to think you can be epistemically blameworthy for believing than in similar cases your basic knowledge is taken away on the basis of misleading evidence (note that I'm not addressing epistemically blameworthy knowledge here, though I do suspect there is some. What I'm addressing here is the relevance of defeating evidence from apparently reliable testimony). So here's my case.

You are visiting your uncle Abe in the countryside (your first vacation from the hustle and bustle of the city). Your uncle has the moniker "Honest Abe" because he's never been known to lie (indeed, like Chaucer's parson he's even suspect of fiction). You look out across the field and you seem to see a sheep (and lo, it is). You say, "Ah, now I've seen my first sheep!" But ol' Abe says, "No, actually that's Phydeaux, my sheep dog. Funny how much he looks like a sheep, eh?"

You did know that there was a sheep, but now you don't, for Abe is joshing. Before, your evidence on balance supported the belief that there's a sheep, but after Abe's uncharacteristic joke the balance of your evidence supports that it's not a sheep. Note that this works even if Abe is just mistaken for whatever reason.

You can make this story more or less intuitive based on how strong your impression is that it's a sheep. Suppose that the seeming is just strong enough for justification (you can run it either with justification or knowledge mutatis mutandis).

Oh bother, "that" for "than" in second sentence.

Matthew,

Let's say that in the case of spiritual experience expert opinion is divided. Who are the experts? I take it the experts are the people with lots of spiritual experience and lots of reflection on spiritual experience. And I take it that most of those people will be advanced practioners of meditative disciplines. Does that sound right to you?

So, those experts are divided on many issues (like experts in most fields). Some say that your spiritual experiences were of God. Others say that your experiences are bullshit through and through. But many others say that your experiences are spiritual and more advanced, in several ways, than the experiences of people without spiritual experiences. They admit that you have had spiritual experiences; but they claim those experiences led to the wrong beliefs.

So, contrary to what you wrote above, the critics in question, the ones I suspect supply your belief that God exists with something like a defeater, admit that you have had genuine spiritual experiences. But they claim that those experiences are those of a beginner and beginners tend to acquire mistaken beliefs about them. They have the spiritual experiences and come to believe that God exists, whereas the experiences do not call out for any such being. And one will see that fact after one has more mature spiritual experiences--say, after one takes up some meditative practice in a serious way.

Of course, some Christian meditative souls will say that more advanced spiritual experience will show no such thing. That's where some expert disagreement lies.

And now you're aware of these competing expert views on the kinds of spiritual experiences you and many other people have had. So: do you stick with your belief that you experienced God, or do you withhold belief because you see that you have no real expertise here and don't know what to think?

My argument is along the lines of Matthew, but as I've considered it more, I remembered an article against Plantinga's experience-based defense of Christian belief that I think works in this situation. (David Silver, "Religious experience and the facts of religious pluralism" International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 49: 1-17, 2001.)

Silver argues that in the face of religious pluralism (other individuals having conflicting beliefs based on religious experience) unless the believer has independently verifying evidence for their beliefs, they are not justified in continuing in their exclusivist beliefs.

So, if there are competing beliefs based on the same religious experience (really the situation being described with the "experts" here), the believer needs to have some claim--not dependent on the beliefs they've gotten from the experience--that independently justifies their beliefs. A claim that god has corroborated their belief in him, or that the world is made up in a certain way (because of their experience) won't work.

I think, then, that in the case of religous experience, withholding belief until such evidence can be obtained, is the defensible position. I still don't think differing explanations are defeaters, but, reflecting further, they should make the believer stand back from their claim, in search of other corroboration.

There are lots of arguments that go something like ‘In order for person S to have an epistemically okay belief in the existence of God, via spiritual experience, S must have a response of such-and-such a kind to people of other faiths who hold different religious beliefs (assuming S is aware of these other people and their claims)’. My argument isn’t like that. I’m trying to make two points with the socks-spirituality story.

First, some people have suggested that spiritual experience is SO epistemically wonderful—just like visual perception under the best ordinary circumstances—that it can’t be defeated by misleading contrary evidence. I’m trying to cast doubt on that claim with the socks story.

Second, although I am giving an argument along the lines of ‘In order for person S to have an epistemically okay belief in the existence of God, via spiritual experience, S must have a response of such-and-such a kind to people of other faiths who hold different religious beliefs’, the “misleading contrary evidence” I’m appealing to (a) comes from genuine experts (unlike myself) and (b) is highly respectful of my spiritual experiences. We do indeed have something along the lines of a sensus divinitatis, or so the critic can suppose. But the spiritual experiences most people have via the operation of the sensus divinitatis are those of the beginner, and often give rise to false beliefs. In that respect they are similar to the visual experiences had by a person who was blind from birth but has just had an operation to give them sight: their initial visual experiences will be somewhat crude and will generate false perceptual beliefs. Only with training will the faculty reliably generate true beliefs.

Trent, I think I agree in the case you present. The difference seems to me that expertise in the eyes of people whose subject is not something you're qualified to judge is not the same kind of thing as honesty in a person you are qualified to judge.

Another way to think of it is that, if the believer knows that God exists through some reliable means, it seems that the believer should not consider the expert an expert to begin with. This seems especially obvious in the religious belief case. If God exists, and believers know this, then atheists are simply not experts on the subject. The trick sock case, if it's going to come out differently, is thus not analogous.

Jeremy, I'm glad you agree with my case. I just want to point out that in Bryan's revised case, the experts needn't be atheists, indeed, they might be spiritual masters.

Hi Jeremy,

Let’s say that the person who has spiritual experiences of God is Jo. The spiritual experts who offer alternative explanations of Jo’s spiritual experiences all hold that her experiences were not experiences of God, contrary to what Jo thinks. But these experts will fall into three classes: atheists, agnostics, and theists. They need not be atheists, as you seemed to suggest. Just like we say to an undergraduate, ‘Yes, I think your conclusion is true and your argument sophisticated; but I also think your argument doesn’t support your conclusion’, some actual spiritual experts will say to Jo, ‘Yes, I think your belief that God exists is true and your experience was extraordinary and meaningful; but I also think that you have not experienced Him’.

I take it that you are saying that on the assumption that people can come to know that God exists through spiritual experience, atheists won’t be spiritual experts. This strikes me as unfounded. Whatever we want to say about these matters, Zen masters must count as experts on spiritual experience! Having fundamentally wrong views does not, of course, preclude one from being an expert. Otherwise, Sider, Lewis, Williamson, and Churchland would fail to count as experts on material composition, modality, vagueness, and propositional attitudes, respectively (of course we can make this point by pointing out experts on those topics who have the opposite beliefs). Perhaps better: just about the most popular view among color experts is color eliminativism, but I think it’s not difficult to imagine that that kind of eliminativism is false anyway.

Oops. Thanks Trent.

I think I'm going to stick with Plato in thinking that someone who is not directly acquainted with the truth is not an expert. I would agree that the group of metaphysicians you have listed should count as experts about what contemporary metaphysicians believe about material composition, but I wouldn't think they're all experts about material composition itself. Only the ones directly acquainted with the truth are.

Jeremy,

I think you're just moving the bump under the carpet. Let's go with your idea:

The Real experts are the ones in direct acquaintance with the truth. The pseudo-experts are the ones with some spiritual experience (like Zen masters for instance), lots of reflection on spiritual experience, but who are not Real experts on spirituality. And let's suppose that you can dismiss what the pseudo-experts say but when the Real experts disagree with you they can, if circumstances are right, provide defeaters to some of your beliefs.

Now: how do you know who the real experts are? I have some spiritual experiences and form the belief that P. I have some more and have the belief that Q. One apparently Real spiritual expert says ~P; another one says ~Q. How do I know which, if any, I don't have to listen to?

Suppose there is a mystic who thinks that she had just experienced a vision from Jesus. Her spiritual director who is reliable and will not try to mislead her and who knows that even mystics can be delusional, that the devil can present himself as the "angel of light," and he tells her, "I really think this is not Jesus that you have seen." Now, I think we can say that this spiritual director is an expert in the sense that he is also a holy man and he also knows how to counsel people and he knows the tradition of mysticism. However, the mystic simply is convinced that she really did see Jesus. There is something in her that simply does not seem right to go against her belief that she saw Jesus. And suppose she is right, that she did see Jesus. Is she blameworthy for holding the belief? Not necessarily. Here I think we can speak of Newman's "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt." It may be difficult for her to see that her spiritual director, whom she is supposed to obey, to say that, but she simply can't disbelieve it. Now, it may be that because of what her spiritual director said, she holds the belief less firmly, but it seems that she is not blameworthy for still believing it. Of course this gets into the whole question of degree of belief and how one can assign degrees to a belief in a particular situation, but I think it is intuitive that one can hold a belief less firmly than one has held it before. Suppose I ate peanuts on Tuesday and after a week, my memory seems to fade away. But I still believe it. Not as strongly as I did right when I ate it (maybe because I know many details then such as what I was wearing and who was there), but even though I don't know when I ate it, I just know that I remember eating it.

Bryan,

What do you think of Goldman's paper on experts in PPR 2001?

Suppose I apply Goldman's criteria on your spiritual master's situation. Suppose there is spiritual master (SM) 1 and spiritual master 2. Now, SM1 believes that I am not experiencing Jesus. SM2 says I am. Both are Christian. Both are experts because they know mystic tradition and both are holy. Both do not want to deceive me. Now, suppose I know SM1's reasons for thinking ~P (I saw Jesus) and I know SM2's reasons for P. But suppose that I know that SM1 does not know information that SM2 knows. And SM2's reasons seems to fit that information. I may be able to lean towards 2. But suppose that SM1 founds out the information. And suppose that SM1 and SM2 even fully share evidences with each other. SM1 still thinks ~P and SM2 says P. I originally believe P. If these experts who have shared evidence disagree, why am I still blameworthy to believe P? Just because SM1 disagrees it does not mean that I should disbelieve it since another says there is nothing wrong with it.

Of course it gets more complicated. Suppose SM1 has: r1 r2 r3. And SM2 has r4 r5 r6 ~r1. And suppose r2 is a very good argument against P. I think this is a more difficult dilemma.

Apolonia,

If the woman “simply can't disbelieve it”, as you stipulated, then it seems to me that she is not blameworthy in holding her belief that she has experienced Jesus. This has nothing to do with the subject matter, though. If S can’t, psychologically, refrain from believing P then it seems to me that she is blameless in holding that belief.

However, it might be the case that she is blameworthy for the fact that she can’t, psychologically, refrain from believing it. If you have long believed that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor, you then learn (I’m making things up here) that many fully genuine experts on the issues believe that it wasn’t a meteor but a series of nasty supervolcanos, but you simply can’t reduce your confidence in your meteor belief, then it seems to me that in many cases you’re blameworthy. If you’re a highly educated person, then you should have the ability to feel great attraction towards an idea and yet withhold belief from it when you have excellent evidence (from the fact that many experts say, after long investigation, that the idea is false) that there is excellent evidence (the evidence the experts just mentioned have but you may not have) against it. If you don’t have that ability, then you’re epistemically blameworthy; it’s a skill you should have obtained by now assuming you’re a highly educated person.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the Goldman article available right now, although I know I’ve read it. If you believe P, you’re no expert on the relevant issues, one expert says P is true, another says P is false, you know that they have all the evidence you have, and the experts have shared their evidence and thought long and hard about it, then it seems to me that in most (but not all) cases you should withhold belief from P. You shouldn’t accept P or accept ~P. You put the point this way: why should I be blameworthy to continue in my belief in P? the situation doesn’t mean I should disbelieve it. I think you missed the third option: withhold belief. You’re blameworthy if you continue believing P, you’re blameworthy if you switch to believing ~P, you’re epistemically a-okay if you withhold belief.

It's when all the purported experts agree that there's a problem. When all the purported experts disagree, I have every reason not to trust any of them (or at least the ones who disagree with me) over what would already be knowledge if no one were considered an expert.