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Abstract
In this reply, I take up the challenges the five respondents raised. In particular, I deal with the issues of truth, bivalence (respectively tertium non datur), tolerance, and justification.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the five respondents for their thorough critique and am grateful for the opportunity to learn from the suggestions they made. Their critique provides an excellent opportunity for me to elaborate further on the paradigm of ‘justified religious difference’. I feel particularly honored that people whom I consider to belong to the generation of my teachers are among the group of respondents.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Van den Brom is conspicuously silent on my criticism of classical forms of religious pluralism. Yet, given his emphasis upon the necessity to delve into the particularities of particular traditions, I assume that he implicitly shares my criticism of Hick and others.
2. See above, Pihlström’s distinction between different sorts of positive attitudes towards other religions.
3. I mean ‘Intentional’ (with a capital ‘I’) as well as ‘lingual’ in Margolis’ sense: Drawing on philosophical anthropology, e.g. Helmuth Plessner and Adolf Portmann, Margolis argue that intentionality and linguistic capabilities (including consciousness) emerge in the natural world but cannot be reduced to it in a materialist sense (see my Introduction in Pragmatism, xi–xiii).
4. See Rorty, Philosophy, 357–372 and my criticism in Empirisme, 331–332.
5. Frankly, I consider this assumption to be so natural that I would not even know what it would mean to seriously deny it. Thus, I understand attempts to think of a simultaneous existence of several worlds to be pure thought experiments or something of that sort (see, e.g. Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking).
6. The reason that somebody is justified to hold the belief x is because x is a good candidate for being true – rather than, say, that x is considered to be legitimate by the (Communist or whatever) party-doctrine (I will specify the notion of justification further below, see sections 9 and 10).
7. The issue that matters for people who are interested in developing a philosophy of religion which is hospitable to the pursuit of religion (as I am) is not whether ‘ordinary’ religious beliefs are reconstructed but in what kind of sprit they are reconstructed. For people like myself, the issue is whether or not they are reconstructed in a spirit which is sensitive to the ‘logic’ prevailing in religion.
8. Most recently, Trigg has defended a similar position in Religious Diversity.
9. A sub-variant of this rationalist line of argument are attempts to demonstrate that transcendent postulates have transcendental functions in the strict sense of the word, i.e. that they are a necessary presupposition for some other (crucial) activity. This sub-variant was (and is) widespread in the German-speaking context. For example, Paul Tillich suggests that ‘God is the presupposition of the question of God’ (“Two Types,” 290; italics mine). Yet, frankly, I doubt that van Woudenberg would feel comfortable in the neighborhood of approaches of this sort.
10. That no serious arguments speak against holding religious beliefs I take to be an adequate summary of the different arguments Plantinga provides in the different phases of his career. Even in his last phase, i.e. in Warranted Christian Belief, he does not attempt to demonstrate the truth of religious beliefs (I have pointed that out against common misunderstandings in “Plantingas Apologie”, 974–975).
11. By ‘the principle underlying it’, I mean the suggestion that we should focus on the issue whether believers are justified to hold their beliefs rather than on the issue whether their beliefs are true. Yet, this does not mean that I subscribe to the way Plantinga works this suggestion out: In his earlier, second, phase, he endorses inadvertently a relativistic stance and the apologetic results of his last, third, phase are rather meager (see my “Plantingas Apologie”, 979–980).
12. Although I do not have the space here to argue for it more extensively, I would at least like to mention in passing that ‘truth’ is used in the New Testament also in a different sense than what the philosophical notion of bivalence implies (see, e.g. John 16: 6).
13. I think, e.g. of Anthony Flew’s “Presumption of Atheism” (in his earlier, atheist phase) which considers atheism to be the ‘natural’ position so that the onus of proof comes down on the shoulders of the theist (see his God, Freedom, and Immortality). Different from other atheists, Flew has to be credited with explicitly reflecting on the privileges he claims for atheism.
14. I think of the well-known atheist strategy to construe theism and atheism as being exclusive opposites, tertium non datur, and then to argue that theism fails (for this or that reason) so that atheism wins by default. The success of this strategy depends obviously on construing theism and atheism as exclusive opposites. The antidote to it is obvious: Introduce a third into the tertium non datur and atheism loses its default status. An obvious candidate four such a third is agnosticism which, if anything, can claim to possess default status.
A particular mischievous sub-variant of this strategy is to smuggle atheism’s default status into its definition: ‘Atheism is the denial of theism’. Well, if it were that easy and substantial problems as that of (a)theism could be solved by definition, why not turn tables? Why not define theism as ‘the denial of atheism’ so that everything that is not arguably atheist is theist by default?
15. Feuerbach, Freud, and others draw unwarrantedly atheist conclusions from the argument that the religious belief-generating mechanisms are unreliable (the fact that a belief is based upon unreliable belief-generating mechanisms does not prove its falsity). Yet, I acknowledge that the charges that religion is based upon ‘wishful thinking’ or a ‘projection’ provide serious challenges for religious believers, once they are stripped from the peculiarities of Freud’s and Feuerbach’s accounts.
16. I think of criticisms such as that the judgments that God is (all)powerful and (all)loving are incompatible with the observation that there exists evil in this world. This criticism affects only certain religions and not religion per se. For example, religions which do not attribute powerfulness or lovingness to God are not affected by this criticism. Yet, those which are, such as certain sub-species of Christianity, have admittedly reasons to take this criticism seriously.
17. I think of classical Marxist and related criticisms of religions. Into this category fall also more recent accounts such as that of Nicholas Everitt (“The Non-Existence of God”, 127) which speculate that ‘if the world had been created by God, then we would have reasons to expect it to be x-like. Since it is not x-like, it is probably not created by God’. Obviously, this is highly speculative since many reasons can be conceived of why the world is not x-like. Everitt is honest enough to acknowledge this.
18. Another one is that agnosticism is in my view not a standpoint which suffices to guide one’s life in an adequate manner. Yet, here, I will not elaborate on this issue further.
19. Different from above, ‘semantics’ is now used as a term of art within the discourse in formal logic.
20. Dummett, Truth, xxx.
21. See Margolis, Pragmatism, 118–123.
22. Margolis, Historied Thought, 65.
23. Although this is not my main concern here, I would like to mention in passing that the suggestion that reflections on truth are dependent upon the domain of inquiry at stake and how we think to be able to access it opens up new vistas for theology. Margolis demonstrates – convincingly, in my view – that the question what truth values are appropriate cannot be fixed in abstraction but depends upon the ontology and epistemology at stake (see Grube, “Margolis’ Critique of Bivalence,” 240–243). Insights of this sort can liberate theology and many human sciences from the methodological imperialism which has dominated them for decades (at least, in the Anglo-American world).
24. Please note that ‘deviating’ is logically weaker than Margolis’ ‘contradictory’. I do not wish to commit myself here wholeheartedly to Margolis’ view that we should tolerate contradictory interpretations. Rather, I think that to what extent we can tolerate genuine contradictions depends on the domain of inquiry at stake, in particular, on its action-relevance: In relatively action-irrelevant domains, such as the arts, we may be able to tolerate contradictory interpretations more easily than in highly action-relevant ones, such as in religion.
25. See the criticism of this principle in Albert, Traktat, 12f et al.
26. See Russell, “On Denoting,” 485–493.
27. See Rorty’s criticism in “Fictional Discourse,” 113.
28. From what I understand from van Woudenberg’s discussion of it (see above), even the issue of justification has been abused to smuggle in an empiricist ideology.
29. For the complex relationship between insistence on bivalence and ontological and epistemological questions, see Margolis, The Truth, 42–43, where he criticizes Wolterstorff).
30. Both A and B must be statements which genuinely contradict each other, etc. (see section 3).
31. I use ‘exclusivism’ here as a description for a particular kind of competition between deviant beliefs. Such a use is to be distinguished from the use of ‘exclusivism’ as one of three different ways to describe the relationships between the different religions (‘exclusivism/inclusivism/pluralism’). Here, I do not discuss the relation between the use of my term to the use of ‘exclusivism’ within the tripartite scheme. The reason is not only that this scheme is highly contested and more and more abandoned but, also, that it is rather complex: It implies, at least, a distinction between an exclusivism regarding claims to truth and an exclusivism regarding claims to salvation (see e.g. Robert McKim, Religious Diversity, 14–34 (regarding exclusivist claims to truth) and 72–100 (regarding exclusivist claims to salvation)).
32. Here, I do not wish to delve more deeply into the complex relationship between the a priori and the necessary (for a discussion of this relationship, see e.g. Quine, Word, 66–67). Here, I mean by ‘necessary’ simply ‘independently of contingent factors’.
33. Examples of those conditions are that I know that I can usually trust my judgment on colors (say, I know that I am not color-blind and that my judgment on colors usually matches that of other people) and/or have reasons to doubt my discussion-partner’s judgment (say, she often confuses red with green).
34. I distinguish the ‘crude naturalism’ of Dawkins and Co. from more sophisticated sorts. In a sense, I consider myself to be a naturalist: Given a distinction between methodological and ontological naturalism and a thorough reflection on the limits of the former, I endorse a methodological naturalism (see Grube, “Natur und Wissenschaft,” 242–247). Yet, I do not wish to have this sort of naturalism in any way associated with the unreflective and crude naturalism Dawkins and Co. favor.
35. For this term, see another New Atheist, Dennett, Spell, 21.
36. I use the term ‘scientific’ in parentheses because I think that Dawkins and Co. use the notion of evidence in a spectacularly unscientific fashion: Their reference to evidence is ignorant of the current discussion in epistemology on evidence and the complexities it raises. One of those complexities is the question how much (of what kind of) evidence suffices to hold beliefs in a responsible fashion. Some commentators suggest that the answer to the question is dependent upon the pragmatic circumstances (see e.g. Fantl and McGrath, “Evidence Pragmatics,” 67–94). Yet, if this were so, the term ‘evidence’ would have to be used in a very different fashion than is the case since the times of Clifford and Russell. However, Dawkins and Co. do not only use it in this (outdated) fashion but are unaware of the current discussion on it. Such a naivety is the opposite of a scientific attitude in my view.
37. Dawkin’s The God Delusion, 272–278. Treatment of Stalin and Hitler – he conveniently overlooks other of his atheist ‘bed-fellows’ (to use his term), such as Pol Pot – is a master case of re-writing history: Hitler – i.e. the person who tried to eradicate (!) the Catholic Church in certain areas – is turned into a ‘good Catholic’. I guess if you are among the ‘brights’, you do not have to worry about historical accuracy any longer…
38. Dawkins, The God Delusion, 329.
39. See ibid.
40. The Amish oppose only the last two years of school education, not school education as such. As Nussbaum (Intolerance, 127) has made clear, the Amish would have in all likelihood not have gotten away with preventing their children from going to school at all.
41. Historically, the main reason for allowing the Amish to have it their way was the way in which the distinction between public and private functions in the United States: This distinction implies, (a) that religion is not a public but a private affair and, (b) that the state should not interfere with private affairs. This is the main reason why the state does not interfere with Amish practices, such as this one, rather than the desire to enrich cultural diversity.
42. In order not to appear to be too naïve to Continental eyes, I would like to emphasize that I am aware of the extent to which cognition is construed rather than ‘objectively given’. I have reconstructed and endorsed Thomas Kuhn’s views on the incommensurability of paradigms as an insistence on the irreducible subjectivity of cognition (see Grube, “Interpreting Kuhn’s Incommensurability-Thesis,” 388–390). Yet, even if there is no such thing as ‘objectively given’ cognition, it would be highly counterintuitive to deny the differences between examples as that of the traffic light and more contested forms of cognition.
43. I have sketched such a route elsewhere, viz. in “Margolis’ Critique of Bivalence,” 252–257.
44. Van den Brom is ‘amazed’ about my switch from reflecting on bivalence to reflecting on justification. He considers it to be a ‘change of subject’. I can understand the amazement since it would be more ‘natural’ to remain on the level of logics only. But I do not think that it is a change of subjects. Rather, I think that switching from bivalent truth to justification is a further development: In the face of the impasses into which insistence on a bivalent logic leads us, it is one among a variety of ways to pursue the issue of alterity in a promising fashion.
45. See Wolterstorff, “Obligation, Entitlement,” 326–338 and 342–343 as well as Wolterstorff, Practices of Beliefs, 86–117 and 313–333.
46. Rorty, Truth, 2.
47. Stout, Democracy, 231; see also Stout, Ethics, 86 et al.
48. Jonathan Kvanvig, “Propositionalism”, 10 (against Zagzebki’s attempts to idealize the circumstances under which agents acquire beliefs).
49. Ibid. (Kvanvig quotes from Feldman).
50. Ibid. (emphasis mine).
51. Except that I have provided examples of obviously illegitimate or false beliefs, such as that of the color-blind person or the racist (see section 8).
52. ‘Responsible’ excludes postmodernist proposals which celebrate unrestrained diversity but would lead, if taken seriously, to a relativism or other disastrous consequences.
53. This is why I have recently defended Schwöbel’s emphasis of the need to delve into the religious inside-perspectives over against the Enlightenment drive to focus on that which all religions have in common (see my “Schwöbels Thesen”).
54. See Grube, “Willam James and Apologetics” and Grube, “Reconceptualizing Evidentialism”.
55. A number of other conditions have to obtain as well, e.g. the absence of (overwhelming) evidence to the contrary and the context in which the belief is held must be a ‘forced option’ (see my reconstruction in “Apologetics”, 313–315).
56. The situation may be different if internalism is coupled with idealizations (of the context in which the agent acquires her beliefs). Yet, the issue of idealization is a difficult one and invites a number of follow-up problems (see Kvanvig’s criticism of Zagzebski above, section 9).
57. See, e.g. Roser/Seidel, Ethik des Klimawandels, 9. The issue is obviously very important when considering what (international) measures are to be taken against this exhaustion and what economic price we are willing to pay for taking these measures.
58. Obviously, these are all prima facie considerations. If I learn that the person holding D is on the payroll of, e.g. a coal-mining company, I will change my attitude and assume that she is biased.
59. What I call here ‘reflecting on my own position (more thoroughly)’ is related to what I called above, in the context of religious differences, as ‘mirroring’ my own religious beliefs in light of deviant religious beliefs.
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Dirk-Martin Grube
Dirk-Martin Grube, Ph.D. (1991) from Temple University/Philadelphia, Habilitation from Kiel University (Germany, 1999), Chair ‘Religious Diversity and the Epistemology of Theology/Religion’ at VU University, Amsterdam has published monographs on Paul Tillich, Christology, interpretation theory, pragmatism, contingency and the foundation of (Christian) ethics as well as more than fifty articles at the intersection between philosophy (of religion) and theology, for example on epistemology, Thomas Kuhn, William James, Alvin Plantinga, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.