A Philosophy of Faith Belief, Truth and Varieties of Commitment

183 Pages·2022·2.47 MB·English

by  Finlay Malcolm, Michael Scott

APhilosophyofFaith;byFinlayMalcolmandMichaelScott
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A Philosophy of Faith
Faithoccupiesanimportantplaceinhumanlives.ItcanbedirectedtowardsGod,
friends, political systems and sports teams, and is said to help people through
crisesandtomotivatepeopletoachievelifegoals.Butwhatisfaith?Philosophers
and theologians have, for centuries, been concerned with questions about the
rationalityoffaith,butmorerecently,havefocussedonwhatkindofpsycholo-
gicalattitudefaithis.Theauthorsofthisbookbringtogether,forthefirsttime,
thedifferentelementsofthisrecentdebate,stakingoutthedifferentpositionsand
arguments, and defending a novel ‘true grit’ theory of faith, from which the
rationalityandlanguageoffaithareaddressedfromafreshperspective.
The book engages with a range of questions about the nature of faith,
including: Does faith require belief? Is faith motivational? What is the rela-
tionship between faith, trust and hope? Do expressions of faith aim at the
truth? And, in what sense is faith resilient? The authors defend a distinctive
conception of faith involving resistance to psychological, practical and epis-
temic challenges, from which a novel account of the psychology and episte-
mologyoffaithisdeveloped.Thetreatmentofthetopicdrawsextensivelyon
the philosophy of mind, language and religion, and provides a map of this
excitingfieldofstudyfornewcomerstothephilosophyoffaith.
A Philosophy of Faith willappeal to researchers and advancedstudents in
philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and
epistemology who are interested in the topic of faith.
Finlay Malcolm is a Research Associate at King’s College, London. His
research is in social, political and religious epistemology, with a focus on
trust, faith,democracy, freespeechandfundamentalism. Heisthe author of
numerous articles in leading academic philosophy journals including Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly and The Monist.
Michael Scott is a Reader in Philosophy at the University of Manchester,
UK. He is the author of Religious Language (2013) and Reading Philosophy
of Religion (2010) with Graham Oppy, and has published numerous papers
in the philosophy of religion, philosophy of language and philosophy of
psychology.
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Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion
Philosophical Essays Against Open Theism
Edited by Benjamin H. Arbour
The Lost Sheep in Philosophy of Religion
New Perspectives on Disability, Gender, Race, and Animals
Edited by Blake Hereth and Kevin Timpe
Cosmological Fine-Tuning Arguments
What (If Anything) Should We Infer from the Fine-Tuning of Our Universe
for Life?
Jason Waller
Ubuntu and Western Monotheism
An Axiological Investigation
Kirk Lougheed
The Divine Nature
Personal and A-Personal Perspectives
Edited by Simon Kittle and Georg Gasser
Philosophical Essays on Divine Causation
Edited by Gregory E. Ganssle
Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity
Roberto Di Ceglie
A Philosophy of Faith
Belief, Truth and Varieties of Commitment
Finlay Malcolm and Michael Scott
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Studies-in-the-Philosophy-of-Religion/book-series/SE0427
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A Philosophy of Faith
Belief, Truth and Varieties of
Commitment
Finlay Malcolm and Michael Scott
APhilosophyofFaith;byFinlayMalcolmandMichaelScott
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Firstpublished2023
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Names:Malcolm,Finlay,1985-author.|Scott,Michael,1970-author.
Title:Aphilosophyoffaith:belief,truthandvarietiesofcommitment/
FinlayMalcolmandMichaelScott.
Description:NewYork,NY:Routledge,2023.|
Series:Routledgestudiesinthephilosophyofreligion|
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2022006892(print)|LCCN2022006893(ebook)|
ISBN9781032164540(hbk)|ISBN9781032181486(pbk)|
ISBN9781003253099(ebk)
Subjects:LCSH:Beliefanddoubt.
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DDC121/.6--dc23/eng/20220216
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2022006892
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ISBN:978-1-032-16454-0(hbk)
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ISBN:978-1-003-25309-9(ebk)
DOI:10.4324/9781003253099
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byTaylor&FrancisBooks
APhilosophyofFaith;byFinlayMalcolmandMichaelScott
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
What Is Faith? 1
Approaches to the Study of Faith 3
Religious Faith 4
Epistemology 4
Language 5
Matters of Agreement, Disagreement, and the True Grit
Theory of Faith 6
Chapter Overviews 11
1 Propositional Faith 17
1.1 Propositional Faith: Doxasticism vs. Nondoxasticism 20
1.2 Acceptance and Belief 22
1.3 The Transparency Condition 29
1.4 Doxasticism and Nondoxasticism: What Is at Issue? 31
1.5 Conclusion 35
2 Against Nondoxasticism 41
2.1 Faith Is not Truth-Valued 41
2.2 The Argument from Doubt 43
2.2.1 The Standard Argument from Doubt 43
2.2.2 Doubt and Belief: It’s a Matter of Degree 48
2.2.3 Doubt and Belief: Single-Minded Doubt 49
2.2.4 Faith Exemplars 51
2.3 Arguments from Language: Mental State Attributions 53
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vi Contents
2.4 Pragmatic Arguments 60
2.5 Conclusion 64
3 True Grit and the Case for Doxasticism 68
3.1 The Problem of Sincere Endorsement 69
3.1.1 Norms, Faith and Bullshit 72
3.1.2 Respectable Bullshitting 76
3.1.3 Fictionalism 79
3.1.4 Summary 83
3.2 True Grit and Doxasticism 83
3.2.1 True Grit and Propositional Faith 83
3.2.2 True Grit, Acceptance and Belief 90
3.3 Conclusion 93
4 Objectual Faith 97
4.1 Preliminaries: the Structure and Content of Objectual
Faith 99
4.2 The Cognitive Requirements of Objectual Faith 104
4.3 Reduction and Priority 112
4.4 Objectual Faith, Trust and True Grit 117
4.4.1 Objectual Faith as Trust 118
4.4.2 Objectual Faith without Trust 122
4.5 Conclusion 125
5 Faith, Motivation and Plans 129
5.1 Faith, Alignment and Plans 129
5.2 The Practical and Non-Cognitive Conditions on Faith 132
5.3 Varieties of Positivity Theory 138
5.4 Positivity Theory: for and against (Mostly against) 140
5.5 Alternative Non-Cognitive Accounts 144
5.5.1 Faith, Caring and Disappointment 144
5.5.2 Positivity and True Grit 145
5.6 Conclusion 147
6 The Epistemic Status and Scope of Faith 150
6.1 Three Questions: Status, Psychology and Scope 150
6.2 The Scope of Faith 151
6.2.1 Theories of Scope 151
6.2.2 The Revisability Theory of Scope 155
Contents vii
6.3 The Status of Faith 157
6.3.1 Epistemic Virtue and Vice 158
6.3.2 Intellectually Virtuous Epistemic Resilience: Stability
and Perseverant Grit 161
6.3.3 Faith and Intellectual Firmness 165
6.4 Conclusion 167
Index 172
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Acknowledgements
Parts of this book are based on joint work by the two authors, in particular
Chapter 2 and the second part of Chapter 5. These use some of the ideas
developed in Malcolm and Scott (2017) and (2021), though this material has
been substantially revised for this work. The second paper included an early
version of the ‘true grit’ theory. An earlier discussion of fictionalism and
expressions of faith, revised and extended in Chapter 3, appeared in Scott
(2020).
Additional research by Finlay Malcolm informed the discussion of prag-
matic encroachment in the second half of Chapter 6. The research and
writing on the psychology, language and content of faith is due to Michael
Scott, with writing and research support by Finlay Malcolm.
Ideasfromthisbookwerepresentedatseveralworkshops andconferences,
includingatTheNatureandValueofFaithworkshopinSanAntonio(January
2016), the World Congress of Philosophy in Beijing (August 2018), the Uni-
versity of Cambridge (June 2018), the Princeton Project in Philosophy and
Religion(October2020),andtheFaith,HopeandTrustworkshopattheUni-
versity of Manchester (May 2019). We are thankful to the organisers and
audiences for feedback and comments. We would also like to thank Daniel
McKaughanandJustinaBerskyteforcommentsonsectionsofthemanuscript.
References
Malcolm,F.andScott,M.2017.‘Faith,BeliefandFictionalism’,PacificPhilosophical
Quarterly98,S1,257–274.
Malcolm, F. and Scott, M. 2021. ‘True Grit and the Positivity of Faith’, European
JournalofAnalyticPhilosohy 17, 1,5–32.
Scott,M.2020. ‘Faith,Fictionalism andBullshit’,Thought 9,2,94–104.
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Introduction
What Is Faith?
A remarkable variety of claims have been made about what faith is and its
importanceinourlives.Faithissaidtobeanessentialcomponentinlivinga
successful life, as critical for achieving shared commitments to social justice,
and necessary for having the right relationship to God. It is often described
as a virtue or to be beneficial or even essential for the possession of other
virtues,anditisclaimedthatfaithcanmotivateonetoact,orthatitisneeded
toeffectivelypursuecertainplans.Faithissaidtocomeindegreesofstrength,
tobepossessedbyindividualsorsharedbycommunities,tobecloselyrelated
to belief, trust and hope, and to trump the conclusions that one would reach
based on evidence. Not everyone sees faith in a positive light: it is said to
impedeasuccessfullifeorcontributetothepersistenceofirrationaljudgments.
Thefollowingsmallselectionofquotationsisillustrative:
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of
today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.
(Franklin D. Roosevelt, in Rauch 1957, 391)
the fact that faith moves no mountains, but may very readily raise them
wherepreviouslytheydidnotexist–allthesethingsaremadesufficiently
clearbyamerecasualstrollthroughalunaticasylum.
(Friedrich Nietzsche [1888] 2007, 144)
Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favour
that it would risk a death a thousand times trusting in it.
(Martin Luther [1522] 1854, 124–5)
Only the person whohasfaith inhimselfisableto befaithful to others.
(Erich Fromm 1956, 112)
If I am able to apprehend God objectively, I do not have faith; but
because I cannot do this, I must have faith. If I want to keep myself in
DOI: 10.4324/9781003253099-1