(Original version was posted on my own blog.)
Occasionally, I've offered theistic arguments that border on begging the question. Here, for instance, is one that's basically due to Kant, but transposed into an argument in a way that Kant would not approve of:
- (Premise) We should be grateful for the wondrous universe.
- (Premise) If something is not the product of agency, we should not be grateful for it.
- Therefore, the wondrous universe is the product of agency.
Nonetheless, I think there could be something to (1)-(3). Dan Johnson, in the January 2009 issue of Faith and Philosophy has a fascinating little article on the ontological and cosmological arguments. He argues that a certain kind of circularity is not vicious. Suppose that I know p1. I then infer p2 from p1 in such a way that I also know p2. I then non-rationally (or irrationally) stop believing p1, but as it happens, I continue to believe p2. It will then often be the case that there will be a good argument from p2 back to p1 (perhaps given some auxiliary premises), and if I use that argument, I will be able to regain my knowledge of p1. This is true even though there is a circularity: from p1, to p2, and back to p1. Here is an uncontroversial example: I am told my hotel room is 314. I infer that my hotel room is the first three digits of pi. I then forget that my hotel room is 314, but continue to believe it is the first three digits of pi. I then infer that my hotel room is 314.
Johnson proposes that by the sensus divinitatis one may come to know that God exists (actually, throughout this, I can't remember if he talks of knowledge or justified belief). One may then infer from this various things, such as that possibly God exists. Then, one irrationally rejects the existence of God (it does not have to be a part of the theory that every rejection of the existence of God is irrational), but some of the things one inferred from that belief remain. And arguments like the S5 ontological argument then make it possible to recover the knowledge of the existence of God from the things that one had inferred from that belief. Johnson also applies this to the cosmological argument.
This same structure may be present in my Kantian argument. By the sensus divinitatis one comes to know that God exists (obviously this is not a Kantian idea!). One infers that the universe is such that we should be grateful for it. One then irrationally comes to be an atheist (again, there is need be no claim that every atheist is irrationally such), but one continues to believe that gratitude is an appropriate response to the universe. And if that belief is sufficiently deeply engrained, one can reason back from it to theism or at least to agency behind the universe.
Now let me move a little beyond the Johnson paper. I think it is not necessary for this structure that the initial knowledge of God's existence come from the sensus divinitatis. Any other way of having knowledge of God's existence will do--say, by argument or testimony. In fact, it is not even necessary for this structure that one oneself ever had the knowledge or even belief that God exists. Suppose, for instance, one's parents knew that God exists (in whatever way), and inferred from this that the universe is worthy of gratitude. They then instilled this belief in one, and did so in such a way as to be knowledge-transmitting. (Surely, knowledge of values can be instilled in such a way.) But they did not instill the belief that God exists (maybe because they thought that the existence of God was something everybody should figure out for themselves). One then knows (1), and can infer (3).
This transmission can be mediated by the wider culture, too. Culture can transmit knowledge, whether scientific or normative, and arguments can work at a cultural level. It could be that a theistic culture where the existence of God was known grew into a culture where (1) was known. The knowledge of (1) can remain even if the culture non-rationally rejects the existence of God (as American culture has not done, and might or might not do in the future). And then the individual can acquire the knowledge of (1) from the culture (we don't need to attribute knowledge to the culture if we don't want to; we can just talk of knowledge had by individuals participating in the culture), and then infer (3).
I think there are probably many consequences of theism that are embedded in the culture, from which consequences one can infer back to theism. If the participants in the culture knew theism to be true when these consequences were derived, then it is perfectly legitimate to reason back from these consequences to theism.
I haven't read Johnson's article but I was just wondering whether there is a connection to belief revision theory in this strand of thought?
As far as I can tell, this sort of reasoning is either unproblematic or invalid. Your Kantian argument has this form (or seems to).
1. P
2. ~Q -> ~P
3. :. Q
If that's the form, then you can't get validly back to P from Q, even conceding that you still believe (2). You can get back to P, if you assume (illicitly) that God alone explains P. But that's circular.
You can get back to P legitimately, non-circularly, if the form is, contrary to appearences, this:
1. P
2. ~Q iff. ~P
3. :. Q
So it seems like either there is circularity, and no legitimate way of getting back to P validly (maybe the argument back is supposed to be inductive or abductive?). Or, you can get validly back to P, but there is no threat of circularity at all.
But I take it what is supposed to be of interest here is the combination of circularity (or near circularity) and validly getting back to P.
Mike:
I agree that (3) by itself doesn't yield (1).
I was imagining that our reason--or our ancestors' reason--for believing (1) was something like:
3. This wondrous world is the product of agency. (Maybe this premise is justified by our wonder at the world together with a sensus divinitatis.)
4. If this wondrous world is the product of agency, we should be grateful for it.
5. Therefore, we should be grateful for this wondrous world.
Do you think there are circumstances where the rejection of a first premise (say, that God exists) provides us with a possible defeater for the knowledge to which that premise contributed? In other words, if God does not exist, maybe (upon reflection) we'd find that we no longer have any reason to think the universe is worthy of gratitude. So, perhaps the arguments still work only given a certain lapse in reflection.
Joshua:
That is a very good question. Manis makes a similar point in his review of Johnson's piece.
I haven't a very good feel for the word "knowledge" myself. (It has not much of a role in my epistemology.) But I think it is relevant here that the rejection of the first premise was irrational. Take my room number example. Suppose I start to irrationally or non-rationally misremember the room number as 315, and so I now disbelieve that it was 314 in the first place. That disbelief doesn't, I think, provide a defeater for the argument:
1. The room number is the first three digits of pi.
2. The first three digits of pi are 314.
3. Therefore, the room number is 314.
The question of what the rational thing to do when one is doing something irrational is a tricky one, isn't it? If I irrationally come to believe that the room number is 315, is the rational thing to do to maintain consistency and stop believing it's the first three digits of pi, or is the rational thing to do to keep on believing it's the first three digits of pi, since after all I have in the end no good reason not to believe that?
Here is one thing one could say (I am transposing an idea I got from Mark Murphy in a different context, and which I think he got from somebody else): Rationality requires me either to stop believing that the room number is 315 or to stop believing that it's the first three digits of pi. But since my belief that it's the first three digits of pi was rationally acquired while my belief that it's 315 was not rationally acquired, it can't be the case that rationality requires me to revise in favor of the 315 belief; rationality requires or at least allows me to revise in favor of the first-three-digits-of-pi belief.
But this is tricky, and in the epistemology stuff I am in over my head. Maybe Dan Johnson is watching this discussion and can chime in.
Alex,
Is the point that sometimes the data used for theistic arguments cannot be accommodated in non-theistic views and so its use is "question-begging" in a sense? This point holds for lots of data and views. Take for example debates in the philosophy of mind over intentionality. I enter as a premise that I believe that there are cows and use it to argue against non-realist views of content. I take it as an embarrassment of any theory that they have to deny such obvious data as that people have beliefs. Of course, there's a story that can tell.... But still the argument is a good one. Williamson makes a similar point in his discussion of E=K. Some of Plantinga's argument in his nice lecture on two dozen arguments for theism share this feature. Consider, e.g., the argument from love. If you really accept that there's love (call it agape) then that's hard to square with a naturalistic story. Similarly, for other arguments. I look at this situation as involving coherence reasoning. We accept lots of things that turn out on reflection to be incoherent. Perhaps, one of the functions of these kinds of arguments is an effort to restore coherence. If you're not a theist then you need to get rid of x, y, and z. But if you are then you can happily accept x, y, and z. OK, that's enough rambling for today.
Alex,
I responded to you on my blog. Don't know why my trackback didn't work.
I think Alex is right that Joshua’s worry is closely related to Zach Manis’s objection. Zach thinks it is significant that all my examples of rationally persuasive circular arguments are cases where the conclusion is forgotten, while my application of the model to theistic arguments are cases where the conclusion is irrationally suppressed. Might there be a relevant disanalogy between the two sorts of cases? I think Joshua has hit on the only possible disanalogy: maybe irrational suppression of a belief gets you a defeater for your beliefs based on it (which serve as premises in the circular argument) while forgetfulness does not.
For ease of reference, use this argument:
(1) God exists (known by the sense of deity)
(2) Possibly, God exists (inferred from (1))
(3) God exists (inferred from (2), after (1) is irrationally suppressed)
I think that most of the time, irrational suppression just is a kind of intentional forgetfulness. It is a sort of turning away from the evidence in order to allow oneself to ignore and forget God. In this case, there isn’t a relevant epistemic difference between cases where the belief is forgotten and cases where it is suppressed – the only difference is the cause of the forgetfulness.
Some small part of the time, though, suppression may be more active and may involve some beliefs which are directly relevant to the justificational status of belief in God. Candidates:
(a) I may (irrationally, we are assuming) come to believe that God doesn’t exist on some other grounds and therefore give up my belief in God and replace it with active disbelief in God.
(b) I may (again, irrationally) come to believe that I have no evidence for my belief in God and so withhold my belief in God (but not replace it with active disbelief).
I am unsure whether either of these cases get me a defeater for (2). I actually think that it probably doesn’t get me a defeater for (2). It gets me a defeater for (1), but it is a merely subjective defeater, since it is itself an irrational belief. I tend to think that I don’t thereby get a defeater from my perfectly good beliefs which are based on my irrationally defeated belief. But suppose it does get me a defeater for (2). In that case, it is also a merely subjective defeater. Once I perceive the circular argument and am persuaded by it, I lose the subjective defeater I had for (2)! So in that case, I go from being unjustified in believing either (2) or (3) to being justified in believing both.
I agree with Alex and Ted that this mirrors a debate Alston and Plantinga had. Plantinga said that when you have an irrational belief A conflict with a rational belief B, you shouldn’t give up B but you should give up A; Alston said that you should give up B from the perspective of your belief in A. (I’m actually not sure they aren’t talking past each other, and in any case I may be misrepresenting them since my memory is foggy on this.) So Plantinga would rule that (2) is still rational, while Alston might rule it irrational. I prefer to talk about it this way: there are two irrationalities here, the irrationality of withholding belief in (1), and the irrationality of retaining belief in (2) while withholding belief in (1). If we go with Plantinga, we deny that the second is in fact an irrationality and there is no problem for me. If we go with Alston, then we maintain that both irrationalities are there, but then the circular argument removes both of those irrationalities! So I think either way the circular argument rationally persuades.
Everybody:
Actually, I can very easily ratchet up my room number example to have disbelief.
Suppose that we can easily come to disbelieve things that we can see have probability less than 1/1000. The hotel has, let's say, a thousand rooms. I've forgotten the room number. I've also completely forgotten the value of pi. I now assign epistemic probability <1/1000 to the room number being 314 (it's <1/1000, and not =1/1000, because maybe the third floor has fewer than fourteen rooms, or the rooms aren't numbered sequentially), and so I come to disbelieve it's 314. I now look up the value of pi, and argue back to the hotel room number being 314, even though I had disbelieved it.
(Normally, I wouldn't form a positive disbelief that it's 314. But maybe someone mentions that number as part of an example--perhaps I'm attending a talk by Dan Johnson or Alex Pruss where the number is mentioned--and so I start thinking: "Is that my room number?" And I say: "Nah! There are more than a thousand rooms, so the likelihood that it's my room number is negligible.")
Ted:
I've heard of that Plantinga lecture but never seen it. Where can I find it?
Ted:
I guess I am thinking about arguments where the typical "hard-nosed" atheist will snort and say: "No self-respecting atheist will accept premise (1)." (If I were an atheist, I'd say things like that.) I grant that that atheist is not going to be impressed by the argument, but other--less consistent but more rational--atheists (and agnostics) might be. And my point is that it would not be irrational for them to be impressed, and if they are convinced by the argument, they might well gain knowledge of the conclusion.
(The phenomenon that sometimes being less consistent is more rational is an interesting one. It is inconsistent to accept Warren's argument for the permissibility of abortion and to hold that infanticide is intrinsically wrong. But it is more rational to do that than to hold the consistently permissive position on both questions like Tooley and Singer. Of course the most rational thing to do is to hold the consistently impermissive position.)
Alex,
Here's a link to the Plantinga lecture: http://philofreligion.homestead.com/files/theisticarguments.html
Here's a link to a pdf version: http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Plantinga-Two-Dozen-or-so-Theistic-Arguments.pdf
Rationality requires me either to stop believing that the room number is 315 or to stop believing that it's the first three digits of pi. But since my belief that it's the first three digits of pi was rationally acquired while my belief that it's 315 was not rationally acquired, it can't be the case that rationality requires me to revise in favor of the 315 belief
Alex, I don't think this can be right. Suppose you believe on the basis of rational inquiry that it is permissible to harm others when it is in your interest. Maybe you've studied too much Rand, but you were serious an diligent about it. You then accidentally bang your head on the door of your office and it occurs to you that harming others out of self-interest is wrong. You've hit upon the truth by accident. Now you need to reconcile (1) and (2): (1) you ought not to harm others in order to maximize self-interest and (2) rationality does not require you to revise the belief that you ought to harm others in order to maximize self-interest. Surely (2) is false, though you acquired the true belief by accident.