The Logical Structure of Religious Belief
From WouterBeek.com
Contents |
Introduction
Religion is unrevisable belief. The rest of this article will elucidate this rather blunt statement. Most of the present essay will, sadly, be programmatic in nature. This means that I will put forward some theses that will not be grounded in a logical system (which is bad).
It will not be assumed that the propositions I take to comprise religious belief are present in (or even to) the person that believes. The only reason why we employ propositions in our analysis, is to bring to the fore the fine-structure of religious belief within the network of interlocking (non-religious) beliefs (including certainties). In as far as religious conviction has a structural bearing on a person’s life, which I shall presently assume to be the case, it is unclear to what extent such an analysis could be carried out with anything less concrete and anyhow less structure-revealing than propositional content. For instance ‘gestalt views’ or ‘stances’ lack the ability to bring about a sufficient number of such systematic interconnections.
This essay arose out of dissatisfaction with the existing accounts of the relation between religious and non-religious belief in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (especially Über Gewißheit). These accounts invariably hold that religious belief does not alter the contents of non-religious belief, but is rather the light in which a person’s non-religious beliefs stand. The problem with such a stance is not only that it does not explain the structured way in which religion influences a person’s life, but that it also fundamentally bars any such an exhortation by appealing to concepts that fundamentally lack structure.
The present essay will not elaborate on explanation, but will open the possibility for a treatment of religious belief that allows structure to be revealed. I will posit an alternative view, in which the religious component brings about or accounts for (phrases that will have to be explicated further) ‘the light in which a person’s beliefs stand’, but is not identical with that latter, evasive phrase.
To what an extent the suggestions that are put forward in the present essay are still in line with Wittgenstein’s intentions I do not know. One might expect some tension though, since Wittgenstein – at least some of the time – seems to appeal to unstructured concepts in elucidating religious belief. So he writes on (the doctrine of) predestination:
[…] if this is truth, it is not the truth it appears at first glance to express. It's less a theory than a sigh, or a cry. [CV30]
Exegesis is not my present concern though. Furthermore, it ought to be kept in mind that there is a distinction between religious experience (a possibly singular and irreducible event, say ‘epiphany’) and religious belief (a theoretical notion explaining the structural aspects of that which epiphany brings about in the fine-structure of a person’s convictions).
Certainty
In On Certainty Wittgenstein opposes traditional conceptions of founding knowledge. His account does not seek to justify knowledge claims in terms of a primitive observation language that is unquestionably in line with the way things are (as in empiricism), nor does it seek to justify such claims in terms of unquestionable first intuitions (as in rationalism).
Instead of providing such eternal and everlasting foundations of knowledge claims, a (largely) temporally transient system of interlocking beliefs[1], justifications and actions is postulated.[2] Within such a network-like structure, some elements are less liable to alteration than others, and these are called certainties. It is with respect to the relatively stable elements of the network that the relatively unstable ones get assigned their truth-conditions. Since the propositions are thus related, the justification process of an unstable element in the system proceeds along this truth-conditional dependency line, via increasingly more stable elements, until one ends up with the certainties that lie at its truth-conditional base. (And the certainties are based in action, which cannot be true or false, but which – under some configurations of actions – bestows truth upon beliefs.)
Not only are the truth-conditional assignment path and the justificatory path essentially the same (though they run in opposite directions), also the chain of interlocking elements corresponds to that magnificent distinction Wittgenstein draws between what is said and what is shown. In very broad lines, the certainties are the things that are not normally said but are generally shown in the practice the certainties constitute. The relatively unstable elements of the network are what is spoken / what gets asserted.[3] It is evident why precisely those elements are spoken, since the background is (assumed to be) shared, communication has no function there. Nor have criteria of knowledge and justification, since – from a communicative point of view – it is only sensible (in the sense of useful) to talk about things not as of yet generally agreed on.
The realm of things that are shown are connected, in some way at least, to action.[4] Finally, it is important to note that the notion of a certainty is a vague one; the elements of the system are certain to some degree of entrenchment (this is one of the differences with Wittgenstein’s early work). How this relates to the seemingly related distinction between saying and showing is another topic that I will not (and cannot) delve into here. (How do we somewhat say and somewhat show?)
Certainties must be true for the person entertaining or holding them. This is a necessary characteristic of certainties, since the other beliefs receive their truth-conditions in the light of the truth-conditions of the certainties. For instance, if I know for certain that straight sticks will remain straight (sticks) under normal conditions, then I will not be inclined to hold the proposition “whenever I put a stick halfway into the water, it breaks” to be true. I will, under the certainty that I maintain, go to great lengths in order to keep the set of my beliefs (closed under derivation) in line with this very certainty.[5] I will have to invent something quite elaborate, say a general theory of optics, in order to account for the immediate visual impression I seem to receive, but which in the light of my certainties I must judge false.
Revising a certainty is nevertheless possible, although it would require a huge operation of meaning- and belief-revision (meaning-revision because it is the meaning-giving beliefs that are revised). But in the process of revising certainties, although many things will change, the notion of the individual man or woman holding those (now different) certainties remains unaffected. One might say: this is still the same person, who now holds quite different beliefs.
Religious beliefs are in some respect similar to certainties. Just like certainties, religious belief forms the hard substance of the belief network onto which all the other beliefs (call them weak beliefs) hinge. As we already saw, the weak beliefs hinge on the hard ones in the sense that the former depend on the latter for their meaning, and the hard beliefs provide the backdrop for providing a justificatory account of the weak ones.
But there are also vast differences. The person entertaining a religious belief might hold that belief to be true (i.e. this is a possibility), but truth is not a necessary characteristic of religious belief (as it was for certainties). When conceived of in the same way as non-religious beliefs, most religious beliefs would blatantly false. Most of the time this is acknowledged by both the believer and the unbeliever, since generally not even an attempt is being made to bring the propositions expressing the religious belief in line with the truth-fabric of non-religious belief. (E.g. that the earth, and pretty much of the rest too, was created in just a few days. It is hard to come up with a belief that is more blatantly false that this one, while not a tautology.)[6]
Another difference is that when religious beliefs change, no non-religious beliefs need to (necessarily) change in response to that. If we change the proposition expressed by “Jesus is Savior” from true to false, the truth-value assigned to e.g. the proposition expressed by “Jesus was a remarkable person who did this and that” might be left intact. In accordance with this distinction (between religious belief and certainties), religious belief does not play a role in justifying non-religious belief. In general: it stands truth-conditionally apart from (all) the other elements within the system of belief.
But the above expressed view ought to be elaborated somewhat. Changes of religious belief must of course (truth-conditionally) propagate throughout the set of other religious beliefs. It is thus evident that under altering the truth-value of the proposition “Jesus is Savior”, the truth-values for two propositions of the form “The number of saviors is n” (for different n) must change. In the next section we shall try to solve this apparent inconsistency.
Levels of belief
In the above we took religious belief to (often) be plainly false. But religion does not merely state the plainly false. For religion adds to an enumeration of (mostly false) sentences the utterance: “Now believe!” The additional imperative is very important. We might say that it stands at the center of religious belief from the point of view of certainty. What, then, is the imperative’s role?
We might, somewhat boldly, define a religion (any religion) as a pile of (more or less plain) nonsense, plus the added imperative “Believe!” But a fool could still not be a religious leader, since it would be obvious that when he says “Believe!” it will have no bearing, since no one will feel inclined to believe nonsense. This points to a hole in our (indeed too blunt) statement. What the religious leader will have to establish, and what he in fact establishes, is a system of belief that contradicts with ordinary beliefs, but that is internally coherent (this is what the fool could not establish). The added imperative “Believe!” than intends to bring about that a person takes on those religious beliefs, despite of their contradicting his or her ‘ordinary’ beliefs, in virtue of the religious beliefs’ internal coherence.[7]
This is where the point I sought to emphasize in the introduction comes in view: one of the reasons why religious belief must be explained by structured notions, is that only such structured notions could be taken to make sense of the distinction between the above introduced religious leader and the fool. If religious belief was (just) ‘an image’, or ‘a feeling’, or ‘an epiphany’, or ‘a gestalt switch’, then there would be no need for exegesis. (This, of course, does not exclude either images, feelings, epiphanies, or gestalt switches from being valid descriptions of religious experience, nor does it exclude the possibility that these notions take on specific functions within the process of exegesis.)
Wittgenstein does not seem to totally agree with the above description:
“[…] at my level the Pauline doctrine of predestination is ugly nonsense, irreligiousness. Hence it is not suitable for me, since the only use I could make of the picture I am offered would be a wrong one.” [CV32]
It is not clear how a picture, in the sense in which the word is normally understood, could appear to be nonsense. Maybe a cow with a donkey head will do? But the ‘picture’ of the Pauline doctrine of predestination is a structured picture, whose components are interrelated in a specific way. And it is only with respect to the picture’s internal structure (which might as well be mirrored in a set of propositions), that the notion of nonsense seems applicable.
Even though inconsistency is surely not the only form of ‘ugly nonsense’, it is an important instance of it. (We will introduce another form of, even uglier, nonsense in sections 5 and 6.) But of course not every set of internally consistent propositions would work for everyone (all of the time); the plurality of religions (and traditions and nuances within religions) makes this clear.
What exact considerations go about in consigning to a system of religious belief is not very clear (to say the least). In quite general terms we might state that it requires a felt need in one’s life, and then the religious belief must be such that it ‘fits’ the need felt. Or, as Wittgenstein says (still about the Pauline doctrine of predestination):
“If it is a good and godly picture, then it is so for someone at a quite different level, who must use it in his life in a way completely different from anything that would be possible for me.” [CV32]
There are different levels of sentence validity. A sentence’s meaning depends (among other things) on the level at which it is expressed. So “Jesus turned bread into wine” is obviously false on one level, obviously true on another. What changes in religious belief revision is a change brought about at the level at which the propositions get truth-evaluated, so that it does not influence the truth-conditions of ‘ordinary’ belief.
Even though under the revision of religious belief the propositional content of non-religious belief remains unaltered (by retaining the original truth-conditions), the mood which gets attached to these propositions changes.[8]
When believing in the Pauline doctrine of predestination, say, we see the world in a different light (Beleuchtung), through the alteration that it brings about in our non-religious beliefs. The alteration is not one of content however, but one of ‘colorization’, and this is what distinguishes religious belief from non-religious belief. This type of influence, not on content but on colorization, is not restricted to religion though. As a matter of fact, quite ordinary propositions might bring about an uncanny feeling (or, instead, one of great joy) to related propositions (i.e. ones involving the same terms).
As an example we take the proposition that “Obama will not persecute Bush.” The proposition is true, but will be seen in a quite different light (Beleuchtung) with respect to the truth-value of other propositions, e.g. those that state whether or not Bush is guilty of war crimes. We might say that the Färbung of one phrase depends on the truth-value of the certainties that share the same sub-sentential terms. (But this is all stated rather tentatively of course.)
In the case of religious belief the scope of this phenomenon is radicalized, and all beliefs (and all acts) are accompanied by the same mood, namely the one expressed by the total fabric of religious belief. In order to provide an account of religious belief, then, we need to make sense of a sentence changing its truth-value, and other sentences changing ‘the light in which they stand’ in response to that, while not linguistically related.
Religious belief as strong laws
In the preceding section we isolated an overlap between religious belief and other propositions that are, because of their truth or falsity, able to change the light in which yet other propositions stand. This shared property, though more radical (in its scope of applicability) in the case of religion, indicates that a similarity exists between religious belief and nonreligious propositions that get elevated with respect to their surrounding propositions.
Such ‘elevated propositions’, as we have seen, can be certainties. Another analogy that comes to mind are (jurisdictional) laws (or sentences with ethical implications generally). We shall in this section explore this similarity a bit further. Since the religious imperative “Believe!” (see section 4) can only be followed by placing the propositions to which the imperative refers on a completely different footing, there is some similarity with those propositions that, within a certain political system, take on the form of laws.[9] A law, too, is neither true nor false, since it is the very device by which criteria of valuation come into play.
Religious statements are therefore comparable to jurisdictional laws, e.g. “that one should pay a fee for driving through a red light”, in the sense that both are not evaluable (in the sense that their truth or falsity cannot be established). This naturally extends to the parallel path of justification: laws must be adhered to without any form of justification.[10]
In the case of the laws of jurisdiction, justification comes to an end, since the end has been agreed on by some kind of convention, and this convention is then propagated throughout a society by an appeal to force (not limited to violent force of course).
The laws of jurisdiction are concerned with the community, but not with the individual. Some laws do involve the individual however (or they at least have repercussions for individuals), e.g. when gay people are forbidden to live up to their nature (at least in the public sphere). The difference is that it is possible to be chaste, and it is possible to wait for a red light, but it is not possible to not be gay when one is gay (maybe). Jurisdiction has recognized this, and that is why in some countries the practicing of gayness is forbidden, while the being gay is not. (In countries where this distinction is not made, jurisdiction is (still) strongly influenced by religious institutions.)
Religious belief as the demarcation of personhood
Religious believes differ from the laws of jurisdiction in that they are directed towards the individual, e.g. the gay person, and not against the social exercise of gayness. There are no non-religious laws that I know of, that are targeted towards the individual to such a vast extent as most religious beliefs that resemble laws are.
These laws are characterized in that they can, by sheer definition, not be followed by a person to whom these laws apply. Adherence to such laws would dissolve the person. But a person, in a certain sense, cannot truly assert that he or she must be annihilated, since this would remove the very foundation for the truth-claim that is under consideration. Such a contradiction differs considerably from the ordinary logical contradiction of a thing and its contrary. We could say that this contradiction does not take place on the objective level of communal linguistic exchange, but rather on the subjective level. The law is not something that one, on behalf of the community, has to (or even can) adhere to. Rather, it is a ‘picture’ (though a structured one) that fulfills a role somewhat similar to the sword of Damocles. The religious law affects a person’s life, in that it dreads a person’s annihilation.
The contradiction that religious propositions bring about involves the impossibility of uttering or maintaining a truth that would, by being true, undermine the personhood (or existence) of the speaker or believer. Religious contradiction has traditionally been called sin. We do not say that a person committing sin has beliefs different from ours; somewhere in the process truth gets traded for goodness (this might be called the religious transformation).
“Nobody can truthfully say of himself that he is filth. Because if I do say it, though it can be true in a sense, this is not a truth by which I myself can be penetrated: otherwise I should either have to go mad or change myself.” [CV32]
The proposition “I am filth” is thus an example of a religious belief, since its truth-value cannot be altered, not even in the ‘hard sense’ in which certainties can be changed due to some potentially arduous, radical process. The thing that would have to change in order for my belief to be in accordance with a truthful assertion of this proposition would be so radical as to not preserve personhood. We might say that “I am filth” is not a possible proposition in our language, though it is a possible religious doctrine, the potential truth of which determines the light in which all other beliefs stand.
References
- ↑ Largely,’ because Wittgenstein does seem to acknowledge certainties which, being directly related to our physical environment and biological make-up, are so deeply entrenched that they do not change.
- ↑ The way in which these different modalities seamlessly interact within this system is not clear to me.
- ↑ Even after being acquainted with the work of Wittgenstein for two years now, most of his ideas still seem to be a mystery to me. It is therefore with great hesitation that I here describe his views. I did not aim to describe them so as to be in close accord with his writings. It occurs quite often in the literature that one collates citations from the work of Wittgenstein, and then shows the work’s internal coherence by an appeal to terms like ‘life’ or ‘act’ or yet other citations, which are themselves never elucidated. There is a certain danger in writing along with Wittgenstein (as with any other philosopher). One does not explain the ideas within one’s own ‘realm of understanding’, but rather replaces understanding by talk in a new vocabulary. (I am not a big fan of that kind of philosophy.)
- ↑ How the connection is established would require (at least) a paper of its own, and I will skip this difficulty for now.
- ↑ To ‘what lengths I will go’ of course depends on the degree of certainty involved.
- ↑ It may be deemed a truism (or so I hope) that what a traditional religion, for instance Catholicism, says is not a collection of expressions that ought to be evaluated on the same level as historical or scientific expressions. We already saw that if this were to be the case, then the religious propositions expressed would be plainly and utterly false, and then religion would not be distinguishable from plain nonsense. Some people believe in this scenario however, e.g. Richard Dawkins. We might say: according to such people language has only one level, and every expression is to be evaluated at that level. This idea of a one-leveled (or flat) language seems to be the point of agreement between scientism and extreme religiousness.
- ↑ So, for instance, in Holy Scripture the four apostles recount Jesus’ life. All four stories are different and there are many inconsistencies among them. But on the level at which scripture is to be read – i.e. as God’s prerogative and not as a description of some historic or imaginary event –, not a single inconsistency is allowed to remain.
- ↑ Wittgenstein takes the influence to reach even farther, so as to also influence the mood in which one acts, which again traverses the distinction I sought (maybe too securely) to maintain between the religious experience and a description of how religious belief systematically affects non-religious belief.
- ↑ We exclude here the laws that science provide us with, since these laws are collations of truth and falsity, and thus do not get treated in a special way. Though in a research setting some laws might take on the form of certainties. E.g. that phlogiston/mass/energy is preserved. But it is not very common for such laws to take on the form that we, in this essay, call religious. (But there may be scenarios in which this is the case, e.g. in some extreme ideologies like scientism, but also futurism and Stalinism come to mind.
- ↑ According to some, laws of a country are to be justified by appeal to yet other international, or maybe even ‘universal’ laws. In such cases the present treatment extends to such ‘ultimate’ laws.
