Skip to content

GOTT-January 10, 2008

A Defense of Fallibilism in the Epistemology of Religious Beliefs

In a very interesting post, Alexander Pruss (Baylor, Philosophy) attacks what he calls “liberal theology,” but what he means by that term is some form of theological fallibilism.  He writes:

The liberal theologian does not believe that any part of the Sources is infallible in matters of faith or morals,

and he has explained his use of “Sources” as follows:

Consider a revealed religion, say Christianity.  I will use “the Sources” for the locus or loci where revelation is believed to be discursively embodied.  In the case of Catholic Christianity, the Sources are Scripture and Tradition, in the case of Protestant Christianity, the Sources might be just Scripture.

Pruss’s overall goal: To argue that liberal theology, so understood, “is untenable.”  I’m interested in his first conclusion.  Here he argues that, because she takes no part of the Sources to be infallible, the liberal theologian has to make her decision about what from the Sources to accept “by the light of her reason.”  Thus, Pruss concludes:

The liberal theologian, to be consistent, must have a high view of reason.

But this won’t sit well with them, according to Pruss, who writes:

I suspect that some liberal theologians, in the thrall of postmodern thought, do not have a high view of reason.

I reply (this is a comment I left on Pruss’s post, but since the issue might be of interest to GOTT readers — or whatever readers GOTT may have left! — I thought I’d post it here as well):

Very interesting post! I think I’m a liberal theologian, by your present construal, but I wonder about this part: “The liberal theologian does not believe that any part of the Sources is infallible in matters of faith or morals.”

I believe the Sources you list are all fallible. But might there be parts of them that are infallible? For all I know, and for all I firmly believe, yes. I guess there’s an issue of possible “neg-raising” in your sentence I’ve italicized above. But this much is true: there is no part of them, at least as I seem to have access to them as Sources, of which I have the positive belief that it is infallible.

Anyway, supposing we have a good enough grip on what the liberal is (on your present construal), I’m most interested in your first conclusion. I’m not sure what exactly you mean by a “high view of reason” — though to the extent that I think I have a feel for your meaning here, I don’t think I have such a view. So I have an interest in resisting your conclusion. And I don’t think it follows, but maybe what will result in pursuing the issue would be a better understanding of what “reason” is supposed to be here, and what a “high” view of it would be.

This analogy, though messy and imperfect, may help. Consider the several Senses. Suppose they operate by (perhaps among other functions) each presenting propositional information to the subject whose senses they are. The subject thinks they are extremely reliable sources of information. Are any of them infallible? Well, that seems very implausible to her. She uses her Reason to integrate the information she receives from these sources, together with some other sources. Sometimes, for example, there is very strong reason, coming from Touch, to believe something, where Vision is presenting (perhaps in a very weak form) information in conflict with that. But the subject has learned that (or at least has taken herself to have learned that), generally reliable as it is, there are certain circumstances in which Vision will present her with false information. She thinks this because, on the picture of the world she has used her Reason to develop, working with information from all the Senses, together with other Sources, Vision tends to glitch up a bit under the circumstances in question.

Is our subject operating with a “high view of Reason”?

Of course, that depends on what’s meant by that phrase, but maybe the way to go is to pretend I understand that, and just present the counter-argument. So here goes:

Not necessarily.  Maybe she recognizes that her Reason is highly fallible — perhaps more fallible than Vision. Well, then, why does she allow Reason to “trump” Vision here? Well, in a way, this is a case of Touch trumping Vision, but Reason is operating. It seems our subject can be reasonable in her procedure here, despite the views I’ve just ascribed to her. She could be thinking along these lines: Vision is extremely reliable, but is very limited in what information it presents, and is one source among many. Some integrating and adjudicating is called for. That’s one of Reason’s functions. Reason is so highly fallible in part because it’s often called on to settle very tough issues. Some of these are so tough because they are matters about which there is information from different sources pointing in different directions. And some are tough because there isn’t information pointing very solidly in any direction. One strategy for dealing with the latter type of tough issue is to be very conservative, and have no views about such matters. But the subject is willing to risk substantial chances of error in order to have a more complete view of the world. (I’m assuming she advocates a moderate, and not a completely non-conservative stance here, trying to balance comprehensiveness with accuracy.)  She keeps her fallibility on such matters firmly in mind, holds her views quite loosely, and is very open to change on such matters, but does not remain non-committal. That all sounds pretty reasonable to me.

But in any case, Reason is needed here. Even the policy of integrating and adjudicating information from among the several sources by clinging to the postulate that Vision is Infallible would be an instance of using Reason to reach that decision. Based on her experience, though, this would just seem to the subject to be an unreasonable use of Reason. Why suppose Vision is infallible? And why suppose it’s right in this instance? Our subject knows people well who at least profess to operate under the assumption that Vision is infallible. In fact, she’s considered adopting the assumption of several people very close to her according to which both Vision and Hearing are infallible. But when she tried provisionally adopting that assumption, it seemed to result in what seemed a very unlikely picture. It could be done, she thought — it wouldn’t be impossible. But it meant ending up with judgments that seemed very implausible. For instance, there are matters which don’t seem to be central to what Vision and Hearing seem designed to deal with. Still, Vision and Hearing do present some information about them. And if they are infallible, well then, you can take what they say to the bank, even on such matters. But there are other sources that really seem aimed centrally at just such matters, and are presenting information contrary to what Vision and Hearing present, and the information these other sources present fits in extremely well with the subject’s whole picture, built up from her many sources, including the matters that Vision and Hearing seem to be centrally concerned with. So, our subject (reasonably, it seems, at least to me) adopts a different method, which involves trusting Vision and Hearing to a great degree, especially on certain matters under certain circumstances, but doesn’t hold either to be infallible.

Is she being inconsistent? Even unreasonable? I can’t see that. As she would pointedly ask: Why think that Vision and Hearing are infallible? If anything, given the circumstances described in the above paragraph, that would seem the more unreasonable alternative. (Of course, it’s possible that there are relevant disanalogies between the situation described above and what you think, or what may actually be, the case concerning the information given to us by your Sources. But then consider this just as the presentation of a *possible* scenario under which one can use highly fallible Reason in rejecting some information from a very reliable source without betraying a “high view of Reason” and w/o being unreasonable.)

Is she betraying a “high view of Reason”? Well, like I said, this all seems consistent with her thinking that Reason is highly fallible, and more fallible than Vision. Well, I guess what I’m thinking there is that it’s generally more fallible than Vision. I guess she is thinking that in this instance, she’s more likely to arrive at a true view about the matter in question by going with the information that Touch is presenting than with trusting Vision. And Reason is involved in making this determination. But is this holding a “high view of Reason”? I wouldn’t have thought so. Her alternative would be to go with what Vision is saying and rejecting Touch’s information, which would be using Reason to reject Touch. Or she could believe nothing. Or she could believe both things, which may be flatly inconsistent, or, depending on how we are imagining the case, just in sharp tension with one another. So, this seems a reasonable defense for her to give to the charge that she’s adopting a “high view of Reason”: “Look, what to do in these especially tricky situations is a very tough call. Reason has figured out that the best way to integrate the information I’m getting here is to go with Touch on this one. Yes, Reason is highly fallible. It could very well be wrong here. I have no high view of Reason. But what would you have me do instead, and why would that be so much better?”

Well, stepping out of the whole analogy to comment: One thing that seems to be going on is that I seem to be construing Reason a bit differently from you. For you, it seems to be another source at the same level as the various other sources. But I’m seeing it as at least in part performing a higher-level, “executive” function. It is what puts together information from various other sources. It “trumps” the various sources in certain cases, not because it’s so “high” in terms of its reliability, but because of the different role it plays. That’s its job. It integrates & adjudicates information coming from various other sources. That’s always a dicey game to play. But it has to be played. Something has to make these calls – even when the call it makes is: “I’ll just go with whatever Source S598 tells me.” You may play that game by designating some sources as infallible, but it’s far from clear that that’s the best way to go, and even further from clear that it’s the only reasonable way to go. Why Source S598? To this, “Well, some source had better be infallible, or we’re in trouble!” doesn’t seem very convincing. (I’m not assuming that’s how you would answer. I’m mentioning this answer b/c it seems to be what’s driving at least many people who buy into infallible sources.) Maybe we just are in trouble – if by that we just mean: have to put up with a little uncertainty.

However we construe “Reason,” this point remains: We do have to integrate information from various sources, including the Sources you mention. Are you thinking that, on the pain of inconsistency, we have to designate some source or sources of information as Infallible in this integration & processing stage, or else we are betraying a “high view” of our own ability to integrate & process information? B/c I’m really not seeing that.

Posted by Keith DeRose | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/446774/25009114

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference A Defense of Fallibilism in the Epistemology of Religious Beliefs:

Comments

Couldn’t you turn Pruss’ argument around?
Conservative Theology is untenable because…

1) Conservative theologians believe that “the sources” are infallible

2) Conservative theologians must have a low view of reason, because humans are dependent on divine revelation for true knowledge of God

3) But with a low view of reason, Conservative theologians do not have any good way to discern which of the many (and there are many) “Sources” to trust.
I do not buy the second argument any more than the first…I think it shows why highly abstract arguments are mostly pointless

Posted by: JR | January 10, 2008 at 05:23 PM

I wouldn’t go judging “highly abstract argumnents” as a class on the basis of a couple of examples! Some (most?) of the best arguments in the history of humankind have been highly abstact.

Posted by: Keith | January 10, 2008 at 06:38 PM

Of course don’t judge abstract philosophy on the basis of a couple of examples. But do judge abstract philosophy (a la Wittgenstein) because of its continual tendency to create pseudo-problems by abstracting language from the local, particular contexts in which it normally operates. For instance, much of 20th century philosophy of science [in particular by overuse of abstract categories such as “science” and “scientific method”] had little resemblance to what happens in day-to-day science. Likewise, I don’t think we should put too much stock in arguments that rely upon broad categories like “liberal” or “conservative” or “sources”, and should instead insist that Pruss refer to actual arguments made by particular theologians.

Posted by: JR | January 10, 2008 at 07:14 PM

Of course don’t judge abstract philosophy on the basis of a couple of examples.

What you had written was:

I think it shows why highly abstract arguments are mostly pointless

It wasn’t absolutely clear what the antecedent of your “it” was, but I took it to be one of the two arguments. So it sure read as if you were judging abstract arguments as a class (and not just abstract philosophy), and on the basis of an example, or maybe two. I guess it’s progress if your target is really limited to only(?) abstract philosophy, including “much of 20th century philosophy of science.”

I don’t buy Pruss’s argument, as you can see. But the problem isn’t simply how broad his target is. It’s often unclear what someone intends by such a term as “liberal” theology. But Pruss said what he meant by the term fairly clearly. Yes, it is a very broad class of positions. But often very good and extremely important criticisms apply to broad classes of views. (It might even be possible to come up with a good criticism of such a broad category of targets as “abstract philosophy.” I just have never seen any.) It’s just that this particular criticism of Pruss’s doesn’t fly — at least as I’ve tried to argue here.

Posted by: Keith | January 10, 2008 at 09:00 PM

Perhaps to state my objection a different way: I agree that Pruss defines the term liberal clearly, and I also would agree that the power of language to talk in the abstract can be useful and is unavoidable (though one should be mindful of the problems that language creates). However, I don’t recognize any liberal theologians view’s in Pruss statements. One needs a “high” (can you say more what this means?) view of reason to reject the infallibility of sources? Being a postmodernist (there is a term needing a clear definition) means one loses any ability to meaningfully object to the infallibility of Scripture? Thats clearly a caricature of many of the postmodern positions I know of. Thus, I worry that these type of arguments quickly lose track of the positions they are supposed to represent, and I would like Pruss to produce some particular examples of liberal theologians who meet his definition. If we were to start talking nuts and bolts about different liberal theologies, I suspect we would not be able to boil it down to one short sentence.

Posted by: JR | January 10, 2008 at 10:49 PM

Hey Keith
Some really interesting thoughts here. I find the notion of reason providing a higher executive level function, rather than as another source akin to revelation highly compelling. I do wonder how this reason operates at times however.

To use your example, it could be:
If Hearing = Sight, then trust the common answer
If Hearing is not = Sight, and I am in the dark, and sight is impaired, then I trust Hearing.
If Hearing is not = Sight, and I am deaf, then I trust sight

At work in the reason are certain meta-rules… i.e. trust hearing more than sight in the dark. I think the question becomes, how do we generate the meta-rules in operation here. Is there some neutral reason that creates these rules? This seems to be the argument of Steven Pinker in his recent piece in the NY Times on moral psychology.

Moving to the bible…

If Revelation seems Injust via a justice contrived of my own ‘common sense,’ then I trust my own common sense view of justice. If Revelation seems just, then I give authority to that part of scripture.

I have a tendency to act in this manner, but I can also see how this may lead to an inability for self-critique (or critique via revelation). Those who ascribe authority to biblical inerrancy get around this problem by giving revelation authority, and allowing that to critique the other sources of information. In other words, this makes scripture both a source, and a shape of the reason. I think this type of source and reason work of scripture happens i many sermons where they address a variety of sources (e.g. experience, culture, scripture) but then ‘reasonable’ settle upon scripture as the source of wisdom via a meta-reason that is highly shaped by scripture.

Taking the assumption that our meta-reason is not completely neutral, I wonder how you think our meta-reason system ought to function, specifically around the ways we interpret conflicts between sources (e.g. if I hearing and sight don’t match in the dark, trust hearing)

Posted by: Peter Boumgarden | January 21, 2008 at 02:54 PM

What is generous about thinking, for instance, Genesis fallible? Or the Gospels?

Posted by: Hans Lundahl | April 08, 2008 at 09:12 AM

citing an argument against Pruss:

“Couldn’t you turn Pruss’ argument around?
Conservative Theology is untenable because…

“1) Conservative theologians believe that “the sources” are infallible”

Why should that be untenable?

“2) Conservative theologians must have a low view of reason, because humans are dependent on divine revelation for true knowledge of God”

I was just speaking of maybe having misread this post, due to fatigue. I hadn’t. One may have a well-working reason, and yet need divine guidance so as not to fall into traps.

“3) But with a low view of reason, Conservative theologians do not have any good way to discern which of the many (and there are many) “Sources” to trust.”

As said in answer to argument two: one need not have a low view of reason to believe sources infallible.

Posted by: Hans Lundahl | April 08, 2008 at 09:25 AM

Skip to toolbar