RESPONSIBLE BELIEVING

S. Joel Garver

CHAPTER ONE

The Problem of Epistemic Obligations

Section III

I intend to tackle the problems involved in epistemic prescriptions by using Alston's doxastic practice approach to epistemology, combined with assumptions stemming from the more distinctive doctrines of Christianity as they pertain to epistemology. Alston's approach is, I think, a theory concerning practical ascriptions of justification or the rationality of taking certain beliefs to be (prima facie) justified. The fundamental point of Alston's approach is that beliefs produced by "well-established" practices (and much discussion will be devoted to the complexities of what counts as being "well-established") are practically rational to take as prima facie justified. Thus showing a belief to be produced by a "well-established" practice is tantamount to showing that it is practically rational to take it as (prima facie) justified.

A note of caution is appropriate here: throughout this discussion and what follows doxastic practices are being conceived of in the "narrow" fashion that Alston takes them--as belief forming practices each with particular sorts of inputs, outputs, functions, overriding mechanisms, etc. They are not to be thought of as identical with paradigms or conceptual schemes, though they can be profoundly influenced by and intertwined with such concerns.

In any case, Alston's doxastic practice approach, I will contend, permits us to attach obligations and other prescriptive considerations at the level of doxastic practices rather that at the level of individual beliefs. In that fashion we may delineate both those sorts of practices we ought to and ought not to pursue and also--and this is a central focus--how practices ought and ought not to be engaged in. If I am right, we can use this approach to construct an account concerning those situations in which someone believes what he ought not to believe (as well as those in which one believes what is permitted). Thus, it is actual cases of believing that will be our focus to begin and not so much cases where one fails to believe what he ought to believe. Nevertheless, the account given will also give us some direction regarding those situations. The account will even give us guidance regarding the praiseworthiness of certain beliefs and, in general, the nature of epistemic virtue and vice.

The distinctive doctrines of Christianity come into play in a number of ways. The Trinity and the trinitarian nature of human relations (for we are, individually and corporately, in the Image) undergird an exploration of the social embeddedness of doxastic practices and their connections to normativity, prescription, and ethics. The Incarnation reminds us that it is not simply mind or rationality that is important--even in epistemology--but the whole range of human embodied life: emotions, will, passions, pains, pleasures, and desires. And, as indicated above, the categories of sin and conversion--which both touch on issues of the heart--must be accounted for as integral to our doxastic life and as tied to the work and presence of the Holy Spirit.

Another distinctive contribution of Christianity regards the goal-directed nature of human knowing. Of course, many philosophical and religious systems take stock of epistemic teleology--whether that telos be Aristotelian flourishing, Epicurean pleasure, Buddhist nirvana, beliefs with maximal evolutionary survival value, or truths aimed at by Plantinga's proper functions according to the design plan. But Christianity has traditionally portrayed the teleology of knowing with distinctively theistic, Trinitarian, prescriptive, and ethical emphases. And so, while Christian perspectives on knowing allow for various sorts of proximate ends (truth, satisfaction, survival, pleasure, etc.), Christianity portrays the ultimate goal of knowledge in terms of a shared life of communion and union with the Blessed Trinity (cf. Ross 1995:776-778; Stump 1991).

Proximate ends, therefore, can function properly, effectively, or fully only when they instrumentally serve the final end. Issues of the heart loom large in this respect, particularly in light of the rebellion which is of the essence of sin--a rebellion that rejects the gracious gift of life with God and in doing so introduces disorder into even cognitive life (cf. Westphal 1990 and 1993). A more comprehensive epistemology will take account of the teleology of knowledge, the epistemic role of power and desire, and the good to be gained by belief. Teleology will also be of the utmost importance in providing an account of what a subject ought to know.

While some might object to my use of Christian commitments for shaping my epistemology, it seems to me that epistemology must be shaped in terms of what one believes to be most deeply and importantly true about human life and the world in which it is manifest. This, then, explains these emphases. These emphases, however, will not be explicitly tied to Christian doctrine at every point throughout the following chapters, though Christianity is always the backdrop.

Even with the tools of Alston's approach in hand and the distinct emphases drawn from Christian doctrine, we will have hardly begun to open up the problems concerning volition or real existing prescriptive epistemic concerns. To further the discussion we will have to turn to examples, of which there will be many.

Permit me to mention briefly the example of spousal abuse. The example--due to its embeddedness in real lived experience, psychology, affectivity, and society--will both illuminate and exacerbate our problems concerning epistemology and epistemic prescriptions. It will illumine the way in which doxastic practices are connected to wider spheres of practice (including attitudes, affective states, actions, technologies of power, ethics, issues of the heart), their social embeddedness, establishment, and monitoring (via traditional sex-roles, forms of habituation, inherited power structures), and their distinctive presuppositions (cf. Alston 1991: 163-164). One interesting factor here is that we are faced with doxastic practices that are, in some ways, tied to "well-established" non-doxastic practices, but are used to legitimize unethical behavior and false beliefs and evaluations.

The example exacerbates our problems by connecting the formation of beliefs to affective states and social structures. As noted earlier, affective states are among those issues of the heart that form the doxastic lives of individuals. The emotions, however, are also among those human powers or states that are seen by many philosophers as beyond direct or responsible control. If that is the case it is difficult to see how the examination of affective states will do anything but complicate the problem of responsibility for belief.

Moreover, doxastic practices are socially established and their social establishment is profoundly connected to the social regulation, production, suppression, and creation of the ways in which individuals are constituted as subjects. Insofar as individuals have no control over social realities, they are not responsible, it would seem, for their doxastic life where it is shaped by those social realities. In light of these various factors--affective and social--which are apparently largely beyond our direct control, it becomes even more difficult to correctly assess the role of volition, assess what counts as doxastic virtue and vice, and to assign responsibility, praise, and blame. If there are indeed deep connections between these concerns and rational ascriptions of justification, then those ascriptions may be equally problematic.