Certain Doubts is a great new blog focused on epistemology. One of their recent posts is about reliabilism in Alvin Plantinga's epistemology. Now Plantinga is famous for what is termed deontological epistemology. This is basically the idea that you are justified in a belief if you've done your duty with respect to the belief. What counts as "doing ones duty" is, of course controversial. For Plantinga what counts is if the belief forming mechanism is reliable. He argues that for religion we have a belief forming process which is reliable. Therefore even if we don't have verification for a belief, we may be justified in the belief simply because of the process we follow. Plantinga's main goal in all this is to justify Christian beliefs that other philosophers may feel are unjustified.
For Mormons, while we don't really fall exactly into Plantinga's camp, due to how we view the Holy Ghost. We have some degree of evidentialism. However there is still the sense that we have some mechanism of belief formation which comes from "following the spirit." So long as this mechanism is typically accurate, then it follows we are justified in a belief, even if perhaps some of the beliefs are false. (i.e. I pray to find my keys, feel they are in the couch, but it turns out they were in the car)
Now while I'm sympathetic to reliabilism, it always strikes me in a somewhat queasy way. Plantinga's form in particular always seems to have a flaw - mainly because it seems like it justifies far too much. The main objection to Plantinga is what is called "the Great Pumpkin objection." Quoting from Keith DeRose's paper "Voodoo Epistemology" the objection is the following.
If belief in God can be properly basic, why cannot just any belief be properly basic? Could we not say the same for any bizarre aberration we can think of? What about voodoo or astrology? What about the belief that the Great Pumpkin returns every Halloween? Could I properly take that as basic? Suppose I believe that if I flap my arms with sufficient vigor, I can take off and fly about the room; could I defend myself against the charge of irrationality by claiming this belief is basic? If we say that belief in God is properly basic, will we not be committed to holding that just anything, or nearly anything, can properly be taken as basic, thus throwing wide the gates to irrationalism and superstition? (Plantinga, "Reason and Belief in God")
As I see it, the basic problem with Plantinga's appraoch is starting from the assumption that there are basic beliefs that don't need justified. In my opinion it's the typical Christian philosopher approach of simply taking things as given in faith, which tends to beg the question epistemologically. Yet if belief in God can be considered basic, why not belief in the Great Pumpkin? Keith DeRose's paper on the topic is quite good in illustrating the problem, and I'll not repeat it.
The question is whether Mormons fall into the reliabilism trap. I'll leave a discussion of that for later.
Well, we express our convictions using the language of evidence but the underlying events are generally mental states (emotions or thoughts) so I think Mormon convictions are really described as a form of intuition. It's a stretch to call the Mormon approach either empirical or logical; I think "intuitive" is the best general descriptive to apply, or possibly "introspective."
Furthermore, I think the whole prayer confirmation process that Mormons verbalize when asked for the basis of their convictions simply provides a way to justify and defend as somewhat rational a set of beliefs (like any set of religious beliefs) which are inherently unjustifiable and indefensible on strictly rational grounds. People are much more comfortable talking about faith as the result of a process than as an inherent personal trait or as a mental state that one falls (or leaps?) into at some point in life, but it's clear that some people do the process and don't get faith and that others have faith before they do any part of the process. Hence my suspicion that the process does little to explain actual faith.
When people describe religion as a topic on which the opinions of reasonable people can vary, I think that's a folksy way of describing it as a relevant question without a clear rational, demonstrable solution. People still defend their own particular solution as more reasonable than the alternatives, but it's not clear to me that the reasons listed really explain why the individual giving the reasons holds that particular position as opposed to one of the other available, reasonable alternative views.
I think intuition is a good term were it not for all the baggage that it has. Unfortunately intuition, especially in religious matters, carries the baggage of direct apprehension of spiritual realities. I don't think that is typically what is going on. Rather I think we simply think and the content of our thoughts is given to us. (That always happens) In one sense that is quite close to classic intuition, in an other it is not since it begs the question of the content of intuitions.
My guess would be that while our intuitions can be "biased" as a form of revelation, they by and large are simply ways our brains process information before giving it to our awareness. Undoubtedly very complex things are going on from pattern recognition to find "parallels" to emotional attachments all given our experience its particular feel. Just as our intuitions of regular day to day experience are biased by our past, our hopes, our fears, and our instincts, so to will our religious intuitions.
The issue then becomes when (and if) we ought to move beyond intuition into more formal justification. Being the analytic sort I am, I think the more reflection the better. Yet one must acknowledge that our intuitions and common sense reactions to life work surprisingly well. What is always amazing isn't how often common sense fails, but how often it succeeds...
When there are alternative views then what I think the rational person ought to do is not simply reject ones beliefs but move on to further inquiry. By analogy in science when we find multiple incompatible solutions to a given phenomena we move on and try to conduct experiments so as to distinguish them. Yet, I must admit, that in regular life that rarely happens. We end up with many and perhaps even most people behaving religiously not from a critical or "scientific" stance but simply because it works in some weak sense.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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Blogged by Clark Goble