{"id":36126,"date":"2017-01-09T13:03:22","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T18:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=36126"},"modified":"2017-01-09T13:03:22","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T18:03:22","slug":"pragmatism-as-mormon-epistemology-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2017\/01\/pragmatism-as-mormon-epistemology-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Pragmatism as Mormon Epistemology Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last time<\/a> I discussed how the American philosopher C. S. Peirce\u2019s pragmatism saw meanings in terms of how we\u2019d verify a predicate. So \u201chardness\u201d is wrapped up in all the measurement practices of determining if something was hard. Peirce saw this literally as following Jesus\u2019 adage to judge things by their fruits. An other important aspect of knowledge for Peirce was recognizing that belief was something that happens but isn\u2019t chosen. All we can choose is where we inquire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The reason for thinking belief is non-volitional[1] is simple. Imagine you\u2019re outside looking up into the sky. It\u2019s a deep blue you can\u2019t miss. Now make yourself believe it is pink. You can\u2019t do it. When we analyze carefully the types of control we have over belief it\u2019s always seems to be indirect. This isn\u2019t to say we can\u2019t delude ourselves but the way we do this is by avoiding thinking about certain things. Non-volitional belief is also quite in keeping with Mormon scripture.\u00a0D&C 46:13-14<\/a>\u00a0suggests that both knowledge and belief is a gift of God. That suggests it\u2019s not something we simply choose.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The traditional rejoinder among Mormons is that scripture often condemns\u00a0not believing. How could God condemn belief or non-belief in something if we didn\u2019t have control over it? But note that I didn\u2019t say we can’t have some measure of control over the belief. It is just that our control is only indirect and incomplete. I might not choose to have my car roll into the street when I forget to put the parking break on. That doesn\u2019t mean I am not responsible for it rolling into the parking lot. Even if I can’t by force of will stop it from moving, I still have a kind of indirect control over whether it rolls. In the same fashion I can\u2019t will whatever belief I want when I want. Yet I still have a great deal of infuence over my beliefs. My control is mediated in various ways rather than an absolute immediate act of will.<\/p>\n

Understanding why this view about beliefs is important requires stepping back to the origins of the modern study of knowledge (epistemology) with Descartes. Descartes put an absolute gulf between the outside world and the inside of my mind. Epistemology fundamentally was about correlating<\/em> my thoughts with events out in the world. It\u2019s really Descartes who ushers in the modern way people think about knowledge. For Descartes there were fundamental undoubtable beliefs we knew. To know something is to build up a justification based upon these foundational absolutely known beliefs. As time went on philosophers evolved away from Descartes but this fundamental way of thinking about the problem remained part of western culture well into the 20th century. This idea that there are undoubtable base elements of knowledge is called foundationalism. Foundationalism for various reasons has fallen out of favor (although some still hold to it) yet despite this much of Descartes\u2019 approach to knowledge still remains an important part of philosophy.<\/p>\n

For Peirce there are things we simply can\u2019t doubt as a practical matter. Unlike Descartes who felt the undoubtable was true, Peirce is a thoroughgoing fallibilist. We may be unable to doubt something yet it may be false. Much of philosophy following Descartes saw belief as a kind of choice we make when we make a judgement. That is fundamentally epistemology hinges upon judging the world around us. Peirce in contrast sees judgement as an \u201cact of consciousness in which a person thinks he recognizes<\/em> a belief\u2026\u201d (EP 2:12, 1895) For him epistemology shifts from making a belief to seeing that we already have a belief. It is a type of discovery rather than creation.[2] Instead of beliefs as moments of choice Peirce sees them as habits. Beliefs aren\u2019t merely propositional but reflect habits of deliberate action. The implication of this is that Peirce separates mere intellectual assent (where I say something is true) from acting as if it were true. The later tells us much more about a person’s belief.<\/p>\n

The idea that beliefs aren\u2019t volitional has quite a few important implications. The one I\u2019ll focus most on is justification. With Descartes justification for knowledge was seen as a kind of ethical status. Were we right in believing something? Peirce maintains this ethical aspect but for several reasons doesn\u2019t give it quite the place Descartes and most philosophers do. For one if one isn\u2019t free to choose one beliefs how one is responsible for them shifts.<\/p>\n

A second important distinction is that Descartes fundamentally saw justification for belief as akin to mathematical proof. (This actually goes back to Aristotle, but again Descartes gave it some important shifts) Ones indubitable beliefs are akin to mathematical axioms. To know something is the be able to (in theory) provide an argument where one moves from these axioms of foundational beliefs to conclusions. Thus justification of knowledge is a kind of right or wrongness akin to how how a mathematical claim is right or wrong. If beliefs aren\u2019t volitional though this can\u2019t guarantee knowledge since our axioms are themselves always open to question. That is there are no foundational beliefs. An other criticism Peirce makes of Descartes is that reasoning itself can be fallible. The way we reason to arrive at a belief simply isn\u2019t done the way we do mathematical deductive reasoning. That doesn\u2019t mean our beliefs aren\u2019t justified.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Next time I\u2019ll continue onto the role inquiry plays in Peirce\u2019s thought about knowledge.<\/p>\n

Sorry for the delay on this series. Work and then Christmas kept me from posting. Posts will come more regularly now.<\/em><\/p>\n

[1] I actually did a post on this last April<\/a>\u00a0here at T&S. I also touched on some of the issues discussed<\/a> in this post at my old blog last year. I\u2019m revisiting the topic because it\u2019s one of the four main ideas in Peirce\u2019s thought that I think relate to Mormon epistemology. How one thinks about knowledge and judgement differ significantly with Peirce\u2019s scheme versus many others. I believe these implications help us understand Mormon thought.<\/p>\n

[2] While still somewhat controversial, this would line up with certain interpretations of psychological experiments regarding choice. It appears<\/a> that the brain makes decisions even before we\u2019re aware of them. That is the choice happens before awareness. This is usually taken to problematize certain views of free will (although things are a bit more complex than it appears at first glance). However it also lines up with the brain determining a belief before we\u2019re aware of it. That is the idea that we become aware of beliefs but don\u2019t have conscious control of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last time I discussed how the American philosopher C. S. Peirce\u2019s pragmatism saw meanings in terms of how we\u2019d verify a predicate. So \u201chardness\u201d is wrapped up in all the measurement practices of determining if something was hard. Peirce saw this literally as following Jesus\u2019 adage to judge things by their fruits. An other important aspect of knowledge for Peirce was recognizing that belief was something that happens but isn\u2019t chosen. All we can choose is where we inquire.\u00a0 The reason for thinking belief is non-volitional[1] is simple. Imagine you\u2019re outside looking up into the sky. It\u2019s a deep blue you can\u2019t miss. Now make yourself believe it is pink. You can\u2019t do it. When we analyze carefully the types of control we have over belief it\u2019s always seems to be indirect. This isn\u2019t to say we can\u2019t delude ourselves but the way we do this is by avoiding thinking about certain things. Non-volitional belief is also quite in keeping with Mormon scripture.\u00a0D&C 46:13-14\u00a0suggests that both knowledge and belief is a gift of God. That suggests it\u2019s not something we simply choose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36127,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36126\/revisions\/36127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}