Believing, just believing

The question of the day is: What is a justified belief? In other words, what are we entitled to believe? The answer of the day, and the subject of my analysis, is the properly basic belief, a central concept of foundationalist theories of knowledge and rationality. The conclusion of the day is that the so-called properly basic beliefs are deeply problematic, and that personally, I would not even use the term. Properly basic beliefs as an epistemic category are of special interest to the philosopher of religion, because they have been invoked as a means to defend the rationality of religious beliefs, or at least the belief in a God. This has been part of the strategy of reformed epistemologists, of whom Alvin Plantinga is probably most well-known. Before explaining the use of the concept in reformed epistemology, which represents a modest form of foundationalism, it is appropriate to lay out the principles of foundationalism in general.

Foundationalism originated as an early modern development in epistemology. After the long period of religiously grounded, modest confidence in human reason in the Middle Ages, philosophers, beginning with René Descartes (1596–1650), engaged in the search for absolutely certain knowledge. They found it, as it were, in various ideas, beliefs or categories that were seen as foundational or logically prior to all other knowledge in an individual human mind. Descartes had his ”clear and distinct ideas”; Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) discovered a priori categories of understanding. Generally, foundationalism treats human knowledge as consisting of two kinds of beliefs: basic ones and derived ones. The former, accepted without being supported by other beliefs, constitute the ground on which the structure of knowledge is built. Beliefs can be called ”properly” basic if it is reasonable to accept them independently of other beliefs. An example of improperness would be, for instance, believing that someone is guilty of a crime just because one dislikes that person.

Strong foundationalism is a notorious position where only self-evident or incorrigible beliefs can be accepted as properly basic. Such could be arithmetical truths and beliefs concerning one’s own, immediate experience, for example. It is deemed rational to hold them and beliefs logically derived from them. Strong foundationalism, however, has been met with devastating criticism, for it is actually self-referentially incoherent. The central requirement of strong foundationalism can hardly be a self-evident or incorrigible belief, and so it cannot provide a secure basis for rational beliefs. In other words, it is not rational for a strong foundationalist to be a strong foundationalist.

Reformed epistemology has been developed with the pitfalls of strong foundationalism in mind. Its advocates, such as Plantinga, accept a modest form of foundationalism. They do think that beliefs are either basic or derived, and that any system of rationally justified beliefs requires properly basic beliefs as its foundation. The difference to strong foundationalism is that we can consider any of our beliefs as properly basic if we don’t think we have derived them from other beliefs. The reformed epistemologist does not want to overproblematize knowledge: she is confident that human structures of belief and knowledge are basically in order, and that we do know most of those things that we think we know.

For Alvin Plantinga, this broad criterion means that the belief in God’s existence can be properly basic. He has been criticized for taking this stance – for example, Gary Gutting has objected that only such beliefs should be considered properly basic of which there is no widespread disagreement. Plantinga, however, rejects consensus as a criterion for proper basicality: ”[T]here is no reason to assume, in advance, that everyone will agree on the examples [of properly basic beliefs].” (Reason and religious belief, Peterson et al. 2003, p. 114) Why should a Christian conform to the examples of, say, an atheist? Basicality is affirmed or denied according to a belief’s provenance, not to its reception, and so everyone can legitimately have their own basic beliefs.

This person-relatedness inevitably paves the way for a kind of relativism. Philip Quinn has expressed concerns over this: in his view, it is problematic that anyone can claim even the most eccentric beliefs to be properly basic. Is one not, in defining proper basicality, dealing with matters of truth or even plausibility? This is a good question indeed. But in my view the big problem is that, in construing the notion of proper basicality, one limits the range of epistemology in a way that leaves us with a truncated, implausible, and not very interesting conception of what human knowledge is. I now move on to explicate what this means.

Reformed epistemologists and other foundationalists operate in a world of beliefs that are expressed as grammatically correct sentences. Consider the following example, given in Reason and religious belief: ”[Y]ou walk into a friend’s house and, because of what you are hearing, form the belief that someone is playing the saxophone in the next room. This is a basic belief, not inferred from other beliefs of yours … you just hear the sounds and find yourself with the belief that there is a saxophone in the next room.” (p. 113) Here, the foundationalist refuses to think further where it is both possible and necessary to do so. The belief in question does, in fact, logically entail a number of prior convictions. You have to believe that there is a musical instrument known as the saxophone, and that a player is required for the instrument to produce sounds, and even that the next room actually is there!

I stress that none of these prior convictions has to be part of a conscious process of reasoning that eventually produces the belief ”someone is playing the saxophone in the next room”. But logically, they have to be there. You do not form the belief exclusively ”because of what you are hearing”. If you did, probably any living creature capable of hearing and seeing could form the same belief as you do, given the same sensory input. But obviously, animals could not. Neither could all of your fellow human beings, especially not those who had never got to learn anything about the saxophone. The sensory input in question could not possibly cause such people to believe that someone is playing the saxophone. At best, they could believe that someone is playing a musical instrument. This I take to be self-evident, but the foundationalist seems unable to account for the fact that, even upon observing the same event, different people may form different beliefs.

A more detailed description of belief formation could be the following. What you are hearing interacts with your prior convictions, whether they be conscious or subconscious, and from this interaction emerges the belief – it is an interpreted experience, achieved through reference to some form of prior knowledge. In this case, reference is made to some things you have learned about the saxophone and the structure of your friend’s house. I label these things resources of interpretation. Or I could say they are implicit truth claims inherent in the explicit truth claim that is your belief. It is downright misleading to describe the situation as if the external stimuli had immediately caused the belief to appear in your mind as a grammatically correct sentence. It just does not happen.

Furthermore, it is far from self-evident that the sphere of correct language encompasses all human knowledge. No perfectly formed sentences pop out of nothing when a child learns to communicate. Prior to sentences, single words are uttered – how come they could not stand for knowledge, beliefs, or proto-beliefs if you like? It is entirely reasonable to maintain that, for instance, if a child utters the word ”mama” when approached by its mother, it is expressing knowledge of or belief in something. Neurologist Antonio Damasio has even argued that, in a conscious mind, there can be concepts even when there is no capacity for linguistic expression whatsoever, and that concepts logically precede words. It is, I understand, of reasons of convenience that philosophers like to discuss well-formed statements, but I wouldn’t deny that knowledge is manifest even elsewhere in human communication.

I maintain that beliefs necessarily come about as interpreted experiences, through reference to some resources of interpretation. Thus, if one wants to find out whether a belief is justified, one will have to inquire about the epistemic justification of the resources involved in the formation of that belief. For example, a person who believes in God could ask: ”Was it justified to possess the resources of interpretation that allowed me to form the belief that there is a God?” When the resulting belief is a basic one, the resources of interpretation have to be subconsciously held convictions, states of taking-something-to-exist, taking-some-conditions-to-prevail. They cannot be premises of a conscious deductive process, for if they were, the belief would not be a basic one. But is the question of justification even relevant when discussing those subconscious resources? Isn’t it so that one just happens to have certain resources, and that there is no inquiring about their justification at all?

If resources of interpretation were seen as implicit truth claims underlying an explicit one (i.e., the eventual belief), one could try to reconstruct belief formation as a deductive process. The resources of interpretation being turned into premises of deduction, their status as justified and reasonable beliefs could be discussed. In effect, though, this move would undermine the concept of basic belief, for the premises, as explicit truth claims, would be no more self-evident than the conclusion. One would have to find out what implicit truth claims lie hidden in them, and repeat the procedure. Logically, an infinite regress would follow – as a reconstruction of how the eventual belief came about! This all goes to show that the notion of basic beliefs implies an a priori confident attitude towards the subconscious resources involved in belief formation.

Alvin Plantinga has exemplified this central role of confidence in a specific case: supposing God exists, it would be reasonable to think that the cognitive mechanisms producing the belief in God work reliably. Plantinga posits the sensus divinitatis (sense of the divine) as a component in human cognitive makeup intended to produce in us the belief in God. In doing this, he wants to show that under certain conditions, which actually might prevail – since the existence of God has not been disproved – the belief in God could be warranted, i.e., point to a fact. But he admits that if there is no God, then we have no sensus divinitatis and the belief in God is probably not warranted. So it seems that, at least in the God-case, the resources of interpretation are considered reliable on the assumption that the eventual belief points to a fact. The belief is justified insofar as it points to a fact. But since you can’t know whether it does, you can’t know whether the belief is justified. You are believing, just believing – you are something like a fideist, are you not?

The problematics discussed above makes it evident that foundationalism in its different forms has to be a clearly demarcated epistemology, focusing exclusively on beliefs expressed as truth claims. Any other forms of knowledge, such as subconscious resources of interpretation, are outside its scope. But it is clear that other forms of knowledge are also epistemically relevant. If foundationalist theories can handle only a specific kind of knowledge, how relevant are they really when considering human knowledge in its full diversity? Do they explain anything – do they justify anything? I have figured out two attempts to justify the information which, of necessity, precedes the formation of any belief, even a ”basic” one. The first way led to postulating an infinite series of underlying beliefs for any actual belief, and the second one to justifying a belief on the sheer assumption that it is true. Neither one of the solutions is satisfying. But can the problem of justification hereby be declared a non-issue? I will continue on this in a further post, perhaps even the next one.

Further readings:

Peterson, Michael et al.: Reason and religious belief. 2003, Oxford University Press.
(Specifically chapter 6, Knowing God without arguments: Does theism need a basis?)

Imagination and free will

Today, I would like to present my interpretation of the central philosophical concept of free will. I argue for a view that stresses the role of imagination in all decision making, even so much that the concept of will as uncoupled from imagination will be deemed nonsense. I am not interested in denying free will in the sense that freedom would be an absolute quality, either present or absent in a living thing. Instead, I will define freedom as a property or state of all organisms, with some of them, such as most humans, enjoying greater freedom than others. References to traditional theories of freedom have decidedly been left out, for this post is not primarily meant as a critique of any of them. It is my analysis of the concept of free will, and as such it might contradict with, or bear resemblance to, ideas previously developed by others.

Let me first lay out the crucial role of imagination. Regardless of the existence or degree of our freedom, imagination is a necessary factor in decision making. One cannot choose a course of action beforehand if one is unable to imagine the action itself and, perhaps, some of its consequences as well. Human beings often see their actions as goal-directed: they aim at certain results. The ability to imagine ends and means was central already in Aristotle’s account on practical reason, and clearly visible in his practical syllogisms. There, for example, the act of eating could result from a person’s actual sensation of hunger and her belief that eating cures hunger. Such a belief entails envisioning a potential state of not being hungry: imagination, case in point. But Aristotle did not, as far as I know, pay much attention to the question whether humans make free choices.

Now, let’s assume that we indeed choose our actions freely. Imagination generates or comprises mental images that, in each given situation, represent different optional courses of action. Some of them are more realistic than others. When confronted by a dangerous terrestrial animal, for instance, one could envision both running away and flying away, but obviously the latter wouldn’t be a realistic escape plan. (It is nevertheless a remarkable capacity that we can imaginatively combine things that have not occurred together in our previous experience, and thus envision a human flying like a bird). In any case, the course of action one opts for is chosen from the set of mental images offered by imagination. The choice-making instance, I suppose, is what the concept of will refers to. Then, the chosen mental images are more or less successfully turned into action.

The crucial question here is: if actions are chosen by will, and will is provided with options by imagination, what is the instance that imagination is dependent upon? What determines exactly which kinds of mental images are generated?

Suppose that your imagination was free from all constraints. That means it could generate an unlimited mass of mental images, for example to represent an unlimited selection of different actions in a given situation. But to speak of an ”unlimited selection” is folly: in a temporally restricted situation, such as any situation you may encounter in your earthly life, no choice could be made from an unlimited range of options. No matter how free the will is, it simply has not got the time to go through an endless array of mental images. It is implied that, for you to be able to make choices at all, the range of options generated by imagination has to be restricted by something. But what would that something be?

Might it be called human intellect or rationality? Let me explore this possibility: I, as a subject, control the formation of images in my mind rationally. Such a view seems to imply that I should be able to anticipate what to think of next. But as hard as I try, I cannot run ahead of my thoughts. At the very moment I ”decide” what to think of next, the thought – a mental image or representation – is already there. It is not ”next”, it is now. I cannot anticipatively decide what to think. My thoughts come and go, and I guess the same is true of yours as well. What we call deciding what to do is thought A anticipating action α, and that is pretty conceivable. But I see no way my thought Α could anticipate my thought B, without B already being experienced in the present. Thoughts are always present, never anticipated, just like a certain action is never done first ”anticipatively” and then ”really”.

Even if I refuse to rely upon my own experience on this, the subjective, rational control of imagination would be hard to explain. For what else could the formation of mental images consist of than making choices between options? Intellect is very much about associating things with each other, and in order to construct mental images, one would have to choose which things to associate with which. By positing ”intellect” as the controlling instance of human imagination, I would merely make a replica of the choice-making instance of will and place it before the ultimate mental images. Obviously, this replica of the will generates the need to posit further replicas ad infinitum. It starts to seem like mental images were being pushed into our consciousness by something or someone outside our conscious mind.

If that is the case, the products of our conscious imagination probably represent a selection extracted from a greater, unconscious set of images. There has to be an instance doing this selective work and sending certain images up to the ”surface” so that they can be consciously reflected upon. This mysterious instance appears to be nothing but a separate meta-will, operating in the subconscious sphere. What else could account for the limited set of imagined possibilities emerging in the human mind before a free choice? Here, the theory starts going wild.

It is not the only problem with the subconscious meta-will that you could not be held responsible for the material provided to your conscious imagination, but it is a significant one. Look at it from an ethical point of view: it might actually hinder you from making good decisions in your life. Should you opt for an ethically unsound mode of conduct in a given situation, you would not necessarily be responsible for it. The ethically sound options just might not have been provided to your conscious mind by the meta-will. Who should we blame for that? People are usually not held responsible for actions committed in an unconscious state of mind.

In fact, this is only the beginning to a whole chain of problems. For the meta-will to be able to make choices, there has to be a subconscious meta-imagination as well. It is quite obvious: if the conscious will chooses from certain imagined actions, the meta-will also has to have some material at its disposal. And when we accept this, there is every reason to posit further meta-levels of choice-making instances (will) and instances providing options to them (imagination). Any set of options has to result from preceding choices, and the choices themselves have to be a selection out of a preceding set of options. This is a ridiculous thought, utter nonsense that does not offer the slightest help in understanding how human minds work.

What else, if not an endless chain of metacognitive apparatus, could account for a limited set of imagined options? An alternative is to think of human imagination as a contingent process. That is, the possible courses of action envisioned in an individual mind emerge without a single steering instance such as will or meta-will. There are many factors that are likely to influence an individual’s imagination: previous experiences, cultural background, natural surroundings and genetic makeup, for instance. This view resembles the point made by theologian Joel Green in Conversations On Human Nature (Fuentes & Visala 2015, p. 289):

”Decisions determine other decisions; relationships shape what is possible for us to even think. Our relatedness actually constrains our free will, not in the sense that it keeps you from making decisions, but in the sense that it shapes the way you even think what decisions are possible.”

In fact, when understood as above, imagination and freedom should not be thought as belonging to humans only. Our imagination obviously tends to be much more complex and our freedom, consequently, wider than that of other organisms. More images, more associations and therefore more options occur to humans than to others. But it is likely that some human mental images, associations and options are really special in the sense that they emerge through unique neurological mechanisms that no other animals exhibit. For example, human language could be a result of such mechanisms. Further speculations must wait for a more appropriate occasion.

To conclude with, I repeat my argument in a step-by-step format:

1 For a human subject, making a choice entails envisioning options in the form of mental representations.

2 In a temporally restricted situation, any choice must be made from a limited set of options.

3 The subject cannot plan any mental representations before actually experiencing them, because to plan X is to experience a mental representation of X.

4 This means that the subject cannot produce a limited set of options out of nowhere while still controlling the outcome.

5 Therefore, in a temporally restricted situation, the subject can only produce a limited set of options by deriving it from a preceding limited set of options.

6 If such limited sets are produced by the human subject herself, her every choice is dependent upon an endless regressive series of her own deliberative acts, deriving limited sets from previous limited sets.

7 An endless series is, given the context of a temporally restricted situation, impossible.

8 If such a series is not postulated, there has to be, at some level, a given set of options underlying the final choice made by the subject.

9 These options, being given, are outside the control of the subject.

10 The subject is not free to decide what occurs to her as possible.

11 In that case, the final choice can be free only inasmuch as the subject chooses freely from the given options.

I have here tentatively defined individual freedom as the range of possible mental representations and actions open to an individual organism. I do not believe it is an absolute property or quality of human mind or human will. In my view, the explanatory power of free will is zero unless one takes into account imagination, which obviously is not controlled by a single subject, but instead is a contingent stream, drawing influence from numerous tributaries.