The problem: It seems that Christianity holds that we are obligated to believe certain things. But beliefs don’t seem to be subject to our control, so how can we be held responsible for holding or not holding any beliefs?
All three of these seem intuitive:
(1) We ought to believe certain things (e.g. certain religious doctrines).
(2) Ought implies can.
(3) We cannot voluntarily control our beliefs.
Three possible responses to the triad.
The first denies (1), holding that we do not have obligations to believe any propositions. The obligations are located elsewhere instead, such as obligations to act rightly or to commit oneself to religion.
The second option denies (2), that ought-implies-can. I won’t be discussing this approach as I don’t find it very plausible.
The third option denies (3), but breaks into two camps. One holds that while we do not have direct control over our beliefs, we do have indirect control. The other holds that we do have some kind of direct control over our beliefs.
Rejecting (1)
Reject that we ought to believe certain things. This view takes the strictly involuntarist approach that we do not have the ability to control our beliefs so are not obligated to believe any specific doctrine. Instead, God wants us to take certain stances and volitions towards himself and the world.
Note: This actually looks quite similar to my proposal in Philo and Faith. We’re not obligated to believe certain things, for those things are provided to us as part of our epistemic build - the Sensus Divinitatis - instead, we’re obligated to take certain stances towards those propositions.
Rejecting (3)
Rejecting (3) is my preferred approach. It comes in two flavors:
We can directly control our beliefs.
We can only control our beliefs indirectly.
We’ll explain and defend (b) first.
An example of indirect control:
Our blood pressure. We cannot control it immediately, by a simple act of will, but we can influence it over a longer period of time.
Similarly for religious belief. We can influence it over a longer course of time by attending church, being around religious people, surveying the evidences for theism, and so on. This is reminiscent of Pascal’s suggestion.
It’s inevitable that we all make selective choices about evidence. We have to decide what evidence to focus on, who to listen to, and what we read in almost every epistemic situation. We can make it likely that we will form certain beliefs, and this is the source of our religious doxastic obligations.
Note: Doxastic involuntarism has only recently been widely received. Aristotle, Augustine, Newman, Locke, Kant, Pascal, Clifford and so on all disagreed with it. Swinburne is an involuntarist.
One type of indirect control we have over our beliefs is a type of will-commitment. If it is weak, it’s more easily given up. We can own or disown our beliefs, making it much more likely we maintain them down the line. If belief in God is a central life commitment, it makes it more likely that the belief persists over time.
Turning to option (a), Jackson now explains and defends cases where we can have direct control over our beliefs.
Direct Control over Beliefs: The idea that a belief can be a basic action that doesn’t require any intervening actions or causes. Or, if believing isn’t a basic action, then it can be controlled via a short series of other actions.
We have such direct control over going on a run, making dinner, etc., even though we cannot do those things in a swift uninterrupted single act.
Perhaps theistic belief could be similar, such as a deliberate act of focusing on certain aspects of one’s evidence.
Here’s one case where direct control for theism or religious propositions may be possible:
Imagine that our evidence doesn’t strongly push us one way or another. In this case, it seems we can form our beliefs for non-evidential reasons, such as desires, emotions, et. This enables us to believe *beyond* the evidence but not against it.
Epistemic Permissivism: The view that in some evidential situations, there is more than one rational attitude one can take toward a proposition p.
If permissivism is true, then two people can share evidence and take different positions on whether God exists, and both be perfectly rational. It’s not at all clear that non-evidential factors couldn’t play a role in determining whether one believes. If there’s an epistemic tie, why couldn’t that tie be broken by one’s will or desires? Especially so if there’s a *forced* choice, when you must pick one of the options, it’s not clear that you couldn't pick one for practical reasons.
Permissivism is the key to our original puzzle. It provides a compelling reason to deny (3).
Many of the cases used to motivate involuntarism involve propositions that are clearly true or false; the authors point out that you cannot believe something that is clearly false, even for a significant practical benefit. But these arguments fail to consider the possibility that one is in a permissive case.
Consider Inwagen’s conversion story, which seems to be a permissive case: “There was a period of transition, a period during which I could move back and forth at will.”
Thus permissivism clears space for voluntarism, even of a direct sort.
Conclusion: We could take a combination of the three options.
IV. Bonus (Taken from Jackson’s IEP article on Faith)
Anscombe thinks that it’s possible to both hold that rational faith does not violate evidentialism, while also thinking that faith can be resilient in the face of counter-evidence.
Here’s the suggestion for how this works: Faith is based on testimony. Testimony is a form of evidence. The sense in which faith goes beyond the evidence is that it goes beyond certain kinds of evidence - like visual evidence, perhaps - while nevertheless still being evidentially based.
Note: This approach is very similar to Philo’s, as I argued in my Philo paper.
This view construes the testimonia in primarily evidential terms, while Plantinga sees it more as a mental faculty producing reliable beliefs. Perhaps both tracks can be taken together.
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