Quasi-fideism and epistemic relativism

ABSTRACT

Quasi-fideism accounts for the rationality of religious belief by embracing the idea that a subject’s most fundamental religious commitments are essentially arational. It departs from standard forms of fideism, however, by contending that this feature of religious commitment does not set it apart from belief in general. Indeed, the quasi-fideist maintains, in keeping with the Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology that underlies the view, that it is in the nature of belief in general (i.e. religious or otherwise) that it presupposes essentially arational commitments, and hence that there can be no specific epistemic objection to religious belief due to it having this feature. This paper explores how quasi-fideism deals with the problems raised by fundamental religious disagreement. In particular, how is quasi-fideism to avoid the charge of epistemic relativism? It is argued that once we understand the arational nature of these fundamental commitments correctly, then quasi-fideism is able to avoid a problematic form of epistemic relativism. Relatedly, it can also explain how a subject’s basic religious commitments can change over time in rational ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Quasi-fideism
• epistemic relativism
• Wittgenstein

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Published as Wittgenstein (1969). Hereafter ‘OC’.

2 See, for example, the entitlement account of hinge commitments offered by Wright (e.g., 2004). See also Coliva (2015) for the development of a related position.

3 That one is not ignorant of propositions which are not in the market for knowledge is one reason why ignorance cannot simply be understood as lack of knowledge – see Pritchard (2021a; 2021b) for further discussion of this point.

4 Our recognition of our hinge commitments does give rise to a certain kind of anxiety, however, which I have elsewhere termed epistemic vertigo. See Pritchard (2015a, part 4; 2019; 2020).

5 I develop this account of hinge commitments and their epistemic import in a number of places, but see especially Pritchard (2015b, passim). For some of the other key discussions of hinge commitments in the contemporary literature, see Strawson (1985), McGinn (1989), Williams (1991), Moyal-Sharrock (2004), Wright (2004), Coliva (2010; 2015), and Schönbaumsfeld (2016). For a recent survey of this literature, see Pritchard (2017b).

6 See, for example, OC, §107, §361 & §612. Moreover, as I’ve argued elsewhere, part of the stimulus for Wittgenstein’s account of hinge commitments is the work of John Henry Newman, particularly Newman (1979 [1870]), concerning the rationality of religious belief – see Pritchard (2015b). For further discussion of the relationship between Newman and Wittgenstein in this regard, see Barrett (1997) and Kienzler (2006).

7 See especially Wittgenstein (1966). For two important discussions of a straightforward fideistic reading of the later Wittgenstein, see Nielsen (1967) and Philips (1976).

8 Since quasi-fideism holds that religious hinge commitments are a kind of folk belief (in that they involve a commitment to the truth of the target proposition), this excludes a fictionalist account of fundamental religious commitment whereby religious faith is not to be understood as involving belief at all (even in the folk sense). For some of the key contemporary discussions of the relationship between faith and belief, see Pojman (1986), Audi (1991), Alston (1996), and Howard-Snyder (2016).

9 See Pritchard (2011; 2015b; 2017a; 2018b; 2022). For some critical discussions of quasi-fideism, see di Ceglie (2017, 2022), Ljiljanaa & Slavišab (2017), Bennett-Hunter (2019), de Ridder (2019), Gascoigne (2019, passim), Boncompagni (2021), Gomez-Alonso (2021), Smith (2021), and Williams (2021).

10 A further case of interest in this regard would be subjects who have religious conviction, but where this is not best thought of as a hinge commitment but rather as an ordinary K-apt belief. Perhaps, for example, there is a type of religious believer whose religious conviction is grounded in rational considerations, such as the cosmological considerations that are behind contemporary fine-tuning arguments, as recently outlined in, for example, Hawthorne & Isaacs (2017). Given that it is not part of quasi-fideism to maintain that religious conviction has to be understood as a hinge commitment (but only that it is usually best thought of in these terms), then this is one way in which a subject could lack religious hinge commitments. In what follows I will set this complication to one side and treat those who lack religious hinge commitments as non-believers.

11 For further discussion of this distinction between strong and weak epistemic relativism, including its relevance to hinge epistemology, see Pritchard (2021c). See also Pritchard (2010).

12 For discussion of epistemic relativism and its relationship to hinge epistemology, see Williams (2007), Pritchard (2010; 2021c), and Kusch (2016).

13 See, especially, Wright’s (2004) entitlement account of hinge commitments and Coliva’s (2015) related account of a hinge-based extended rationality.

14 This is known as Capgras syndrome. See also the Cotard delusion that one is dead or disembodied. For further discussion of delusions and their philosophical significance, see Bortolotti (2018). See also endnote 15.

15 Of course, one theoretical option in such cases is not to regard the subject as genuinely believing the target proposition (even in the folk sense of the term) because they aren’t really committed to its truth, despite their protestations to the contrary. In that case it would not plausibly be a candidate for being a hinge commitment, even despite the surface certainty in play.

16 The opening remarks in On Certainty, which correspond to the first of the four notebooks that make up the work, are largely devoted to the unintelligibility of such claims. See, for example, OC, §§35-37.

17 One drawback of the conception of hinge commitments as necessary presuppositions for cognitive endeavour described above is that it ends up treating theoretical claims, both of a philosophical variety and more generally, as hinge commitments. On this proposal, for example, commitments to the reality of the external world and to the uniformity of nature are counted as hinge commitments.

18 Indeed, I’ve argued elsewhere that conspiracy theories are often not even best thought of as K-apt beliefs, but rather as a kind of pretense of (K-apt) belief. See Pritchard (2018a).

19 Notice that essentially the same process explains why a subject might, in unusual conditions, no longer be hinge committed to having hands. Going back to the example offered earlier of a scenario in which an agent wakes in a hospital bed after a large explosion, the subject’s set of K-apt beliefs is bound to be significantly different in relevant respects to what it was prior to these unusual conditions obtaining. Moreover, the changes in the K-apt beliefs in response to these changed circumstances could be entirely rational. And yet this change in the K-apt beliefs affects whether the über hinge commitment manifests itself in this specific hinge commitment. There is thus a rational process in play which leads, albeit indirectly, to the change in the subject’s hinge commitment.

20 See, for example, OC, §153 & §476.

21 See, especially, Davidson (1983), and in particular his use of the principle of charity to defend the claim that ‘belief is its nature veridical’. For further discussion of Davidson’s content externalism in this respect, see Pritchard (2013).

22 This is also one reason why the ‘hinge’ metaphor, although it is the one that stuck with Wittgenstein’s commentators, is perhaps the least apt of all the metaphors that Wittgenstein uses to illustrate his proposal. What Wittgenstein has in mind, of course, is the idea that something must stand fast in order for something else (in this case rational evaluation) to function. But the hinge metaphor also seems to imply an optionality that Wittgenstein didn’t have in mind – one can, after all, move one’s hinges at will, and the door will then turn differently. This makes our hinge commitments look like they are matters of individual choice, which is clearly not what Wittgenstein had in mind. This is evident from the other metaphors that Wittgenstein uses in this regard, which do not have any hint of optionality and stress instead the social structures that give rise to one’s hinge commitments. Wittgenstein notes, for example, that our hinge certainties constitute the ‘scaffolding’ of our thoughts (OC, §211), that they form the ‘foundations of our language-games’ (OC, §§401-3), that they represent the implicit ‘world-picture’ from within which we inquire, the ‘inherited background against which [we] distinguish between true and false’ (OC, §§94-5), and that they are part of the ‘river-bed’ that guides the ‘river’ of thought and inquiry (OC, §§96-99).

23 This only applies insofar as the religious conviction is a hinge commitment, of course. The kind of religious believer described in endnote 10 above, for example, might be perfectly well able to effect such a compartmentalization.

24 For example, I think the high-profile debates between the so-called ‘New Atheists’ and (for the most part) representatives of Christianity were of this form, with each side simply promoting the party line to their own supporters.

25 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for detailed comments on an earlier version of this paper. Thanks also to Sherif Salem.