I've never had any trouble trusting senses and reason as a meaningfully effective way to interact with physical reality. In other words, trusting the real world as, approximately, "real". With the caveats you note.
Trusting other people is a more complicated case, since it heavily overlaps with what we reasonably believe about free will. I grasped way back in high school that free will doesn't really make much logical sense. At the time, I recall a friend responding with "Maybe not. But you have to live like free will exists, and everyone has it, so it really doesn't matter if it actually exists." At the time I fully agreed, but my position has become more nuanced since then.
I find, weirdly, that there is practical overlap between how we handle "are people free willed?" with how treat them for fallibility, how we trust or don't trust them, how effective human senses and reason are for dealing with people, etc. In a philosophical universe where people are fully free-willed rational actors, with trustworthy senses and reason, they deserve 100% of the blame for their bad actions. There isn't room for empathy, or extenuating circumstances, or "there but for the grace of God go I", etc. I think that's not the "real" universe, or at least I don't want it to be. I find the older I get, the more comfortable I become believing that people, myself included, are a lot *less* free-willed and rational than we default to believing. As long as I'm careful to keep my moral compass tuned, that makes me feel *more* sympathetic and forgiving to them (as flawed and limited) rather than less (as effectively non-sentient).
The 3rd area this touches on is that I believe we, as a society, need to grow past thinking of *tribes* as rational actors. Everyone seems to default to anthropomorphizing groups as though they were people, and expecting them to behave like people, with rational responses to input, with free-willed action, moral behavior, etc. It has become more and more obvious to me that that's nonsense. I think tribes follow sociological response patterns like gases follow ideal gas law. Free-will and morals and rationality aren't part of it at all. And thinking that tribes are moral actors seems to consistently lead to bigotry against members of opposing tribes. The difficulty is bridging the gap between un-moral, pre-rational group behavior, and the actions of individual members (who are, of course, powerfully influenced by their tribe). That's a moral rat's nest that seems particularly vital to unsnarl, these days.
I agree with you, certainly, that the kind of faith or trust that we have in our sense experiences regarding the world around us presents issues of such a different order from trusting in other people that most of us seldom if ever even think about the former, whereas few of us can avoid grappling with the latter. They are importantly analogous, though, and, taken together, they provide, I believe, a reasonable basis for going on to think about faith in the judgments of conscience and faith in God.
Free will is a knotty philosophical topic—an object of faith in its own right! The more we learn about human nature, the more it makes sense to me to understand human behavior as *less* free than we used to think. I still believe in free will, though honestly I would rather make a rational argument for moral obligations than for free will! I am not sure I see the connection between free will and trust. Humanly speaking, the whole business of rewarding or penalizing actions seems to me to make about as much sense on a determinist schema as on a libertarian schema, with the caveat that the goal is not justice, but reinforcement of desired traits and actions. We train animals and even trees; it seems reasonable to me to endeavor to train ourselves.
Tribes are not moral actors, and human beings in sufficient numbers statistically behave deterministically. However, human actions within tribes are shaped by culture, and culture is both the product of moral choices and a shaper of them. Catholic teaching regarding “social sins” or “structures of sin” is relevant here, and explains why certain kinds of bad actions are more prevalent in one tribe than another. The quest to reform tribes is ultimately a quest to reshape culture.
Yeah, trust has a couple meanings here, which muddies the waters. There's, at least: "how much do I trust my own senses and reason?", "How much do I trust that another is acting in a way I might consider rational?", and "How much do I trust that another is acting with good or bad intent?". I was thinking of the first two and not really the third. That 3rd even feels like a different definition of the word trust, somehow.
In any case, I was mostly listing off many grey areas that should make me give leeway to others, which includes "I don't know how free willed we are", those definitions of trust, and several other things. They come from different angles, but from a practical perspective, the result is all the same: Give leeway, don't be surprised by irrationality, and keep an open mind about "why" people are doing what they do. Especially I try to be reluctant to assume malintent. Almost no one is *trying* to be the bad guy. It feels a bit dehumanizing (a risk that needs to be watched for), but I suspect it would be better to think of someone as less free-willed, rather than more intentionally evil.
Yep, agreed on the tribes comments. One of my worries is that, with global communication, social media, etc. the effective size of most tribes has suddenly grown too large (and the tribal culture too reinforced) to influence in any meaningful way. At least with the teaching tools handed down to us from history. The obvious answer is "build more powerful tools", but a whole lot of risk lies down that path as well.
These are certainly going to be interesting times.
The medievals distinguished three ways that a word could be used in different connections: univocally, equivocally, and analogically. Faith in sense experience and faith in other people is not the same kind of faith (not univocal), but it’s also not two completely different things (equivocal). There is an analogical relationship between the two senses: in both cases we take a leap of some kind that goes beyond what we can empirically show to be warranted, one that is necessary for (a certain understanding of) human well-being.
I have thought a lot over the years about global villages, and about tribalism, but never until this moment about “global tribalism”—a terrifying thought! And the goal of trying to shape or reform culture in moral ways certainly faces an uphill battle in the information age that enables those who resist reform to “flood the zone with shit,” as one of that ilk memorably put it. Easier to burn bridges than to build them.
Interesting times indeed, in the sense notably if wrongly associated with ancient Chinese curses.
"Global tribalism" - Ick. I hadn't actually been thinking globally, just nationally. Like how, within the past 20 years, every rural area in the US has become "The Confederacy", with literal confederate flags everywhere. That's frightening enough. But maybe we really are starting to see this stuff go global. It appears to be the full intent of the Russian propaganda farms to merge the maga-right in the US in with a global-right tribe, sponsored by Putin's government. We're loosing the chains on some real monsters here.
I've been thinking about faith--and the relationship of human and divine faith--a lot lately, in the context (real, but also metaphorical) of exercise and diet.
Like, even though there are many paths to health, I really believe that if I had less fat on me, there would be a lot of benefits. But I have always had a lot of doubts as to whether it can be done. Should I shift how I eat, exercise three days a week, and so on--at an expense of time with my son, time relaxing, and so on--when I'm not certain that I will receive the benefits? After all, many times I have attempted to make changes, and never really had much of a difference (other than the time I significantly injured my shoulder, in which case the difference was negative.)
I'm about three weeks into a new regimen, though, which means that, somehow, I switched from "I don't believe that I can make change" to "I do believe I'll make change." But it's still faith. I still have doubts whether it will work. And it's a sort of empirical / rational faith. I am still looking at what this does to my energy levels, whether I am becoming stronger, my weight, etc. But as long as I keep doing the work, I am showing that I still believe in my capacity for change. And of course working out, dieting, seeing progress and so on further feed the faith, as I both gain positive benefits and (equally important) begin to assume this way of existing as natural for me, rather than alien.
The question I keep pondering, though, is how far this extends towards my Christian faith. On one hand, it seems obvious that there is a significant overlap. Christians follow "the way," traditional catechism involved a transformation of their way of life, faith heroes like Abraham showed their faith by their actions, and so on.
So there is a significant sense in which "I believe that I can be much healthier" and "I believe in God the Father, almighty maker of Heaven and Earth" are similar statements: judgments around the world that require and can only coexist with a certain allegiance and set of actions. If I truly believe I will become healthier, why wouldn't I persist? If I truly believe God exists and revealed Himself through Christ and that homeless guy talking to me, why wouldn't I treat him to a Chipotle burrito? In both cases, actions reveal (in general) what we really believe.
Which is kinda terrifying, and also why I need to come each Sunday to Mass, where I am told my sins are forgiven, where I am given Christ's body and blood no matter how well I have or haven't believed.
But the question I keep pondering is ... where does this metaphor break? Where is spiritual faith in Christ different from intellectual/emotional faith in diet and exercise? That continues to be a harder question for me.
Not a complete answer, Scott … but, for me at least, I might start here: What “faith” I have in my regimen of diet and exercise is ordered toward that regimen as a means to an end. That is, I trust myself to this course of action for the sake of true goals that I desire for their own sake: for hope of health, comfort, and longevity. My faith in God is not like that. I don’t believe in God for the sake of other things that I care about more; God himself is my ultimate goal. Indeed, everything else that I love and desire in life, even for its own sake—even ends like health, comfort, and longevity—find their ultimate value in God’s love of me and of my neighbor. It is because God loves me and I love God that my desire to be healthy, and therefore to maintain a healthy regimen of diet and exercise, finds its ultimate purpose.
This at least is the goal! Bernard of Clairvaux said we start out loving ourselves for our own sake, and we first learn to love God for our own sake. Eventually we progress to loving God for God’s own sake—but the journey isn’t complete until we learn to love ourselves for God’s sake. Insofar as faith, hope, and love are ultimately one reality, this highlights, I think, how our faith in God, which is also love of God, is different from any other faith or love in our lives.
I really liked reading this essay and I understood almost all of it (I'm no philosopher), but I didn't plan on writing a comment until a little something happened...
As I began reading, I thought you would reference St. John Paul II's encyclical Faith and Reason. (I'm not criticizing its omission.) I have read some of his writings but not that one. Maybe this is a sign that I should soon. Anyways, moments after I finish your essay, my friend turns on the TV and (lo and behold) it's in the middle of an EWTN program featuring a professor talking about how faith and reason informed St. John Paul II's humanism! I'm not going to attach too much meaning to that coincidence, but I still wanted to share it.
I…I mean, Jesus tells us that to love God “with your whole mind” as well as your whole hart, soul, and strength is the first and greatest of commandments. Paul in Romans 1 engages in natural theology (“Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made”). I agree with C.S. Lewis:
“The fact that what you are thinking about God Himself (for example, when you are praying) does not mean that you can be content with the same babyish ideas which you had when you were a five-year-old. It is, of course, quite true that God will not love you any the less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have been born with a very second-rate brain. He has room for people with very little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have. The proper motto is not ‘Be good, sweet maid and let who can be clever,’ but ‘Be good, sweet maid, and don’t forget that this involves being as clever as you can.’ God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers.” (Mere Christianity)
Follow what, exactly? As Jewel sings, “We pray to as many gods as there are flowers.” To unbelievers, there are so many religions, how can you avoid being made a sucker?
I don’t agree with the song that our religions are all incommensurate but rather that there are really just a few credible options, and that my own can be defended as high among these possibilities. But that’s the work of thinking, not just trust.
Yeah, this, John. “Just following and leaving all that reasoning stuff to other, lesser suckers” is a religious epistemology enimently amenable to Mormons and Muslims, geocentrists and young-Earth creationists, anti-vaxers and suicide cults. (No moral equivalence implied!)
This is a fun topic. Good write-up!
I've never had any trouble trusting senses and reason as a meaningfully effective way to interact with physical reality. In other words, trusting the real world as, approximately, "real". With the caveats you note.
Trusting other people is a more complicated case, since it heavily overlaps with what we reasonably believe about free will. I grasped way back in high school that free will doesn't really make much logical sense. At the time, I recall a friend responding with "Maybe not. But you have to live like free will exists, and everyone has it, so it really doesn't matter if it actually exists." At the time I fully agreed, but my position has become more nuanced since then.
I find, weirdly, that there is practical overlap between how we handle "are people free willed?" with how treat them for fallibility, how we trust or don't trust them, how effective human senses and reason are for dealing with people, etc. In a philosophical universe where people are fully free-willed rational actors, with trustworthy senses and reason, they deserve 100% of the blame for their bad actions. There isn't room for empathy, or extenuating circumstances, or "there but for the grace of God go I", etc. I think that's not the "real" universe, or at least I don't want it to be. I find the older I get, the more comfortable I become believing that people, myself included, are a lot *less* free-willed and rational than we default to believing. As long as I'm careful to keep my moral compass tuned, that makes me feel *more* sympathetic and forgiving to them (as flawed and limited) rather than less (as effectively non-sentient).
The 3rd area this touches on is that I believe we, as a society, need to grow past thinking of *tribes* as rational actors. Everyone seems to default to anthropomorphizing groups as though they were people, and expecting them to behave like people, with rational responses to input, with free-willed action, moral behavior, etc. It has become more and more obvious to me that that's nonsense. I think tribes follow sociological response patterns like gases follow ideal gas law. Free-will and morals and rationality aren't part of it at all. And thinking that tribes are moral actors seems to consistently lead to bigotry against members of opposing tribes. The difficulty is bridging the gap between un-moral, pre-rational group behavior, and the actions of individual members (who are, of course, powerfully influenced by their tribe). That's a moral rat's nest that seems particularly vital to unsnarl, these days.
Some really fascinating tangents here, Brian!
I agree with you, certainly, that the kind of faith or trust that we have in our sense experiences regarding the world around us presents issues of such a different order from trusting in other people that most of us seldom if ever even think about the former, whereas few of us can avoid grappling with the latter. They are importantly analogous, though, and, taken together, they provide, I believe, a reasonable basis for going on to think about faith in the judgments of conscience and faith in God.
Free will is a knotty philosophical topic—an object of faith in its own right! The more we learn about human nature, the more it makes sense to me to understand human behavior as *less* free than we used to think. I still believe in free will, though honestly I would rather make a rational argument for moral obligations than for free will! I am not sure I see the connection between free will and trust. Humanly speaking, the whole business of rewarding or penalizing actions seems to me to make about as much sense on a determinist schema as on a libertarian schema, with the caveat that the goal is not justice, but reinforcement of desired traits and actions. We train animals and even trees; it seems reasonable to me to endeavor to train ourselves.
Tribes are not moral actors, and human beings in sufficient numbers statistically behave deterministically. However, human actions within tribes are shaped by culture, and culture is both the product of moral choices and a shaper of them. Catholic teaching regarding “social sins” or “structures of sin” is relevant here, and explains why certain kinds of bad actions are more prevalent in one tribe than another. The quest to reform tribes is ultimately a quest to reshape culture.
Yeah, trust has a couple meanings here, which muddies the waters. There's, at least: "how much do I trust my own senses and reason?", "How much do I trust that another is acting in a way I might consider rational?", and "How much do I trust that another is acting with good or bad intent?". I was thinking of the first two and not really the third. That 3rd even feels like a different definition of the word trust, somehow.
In any case, I was mostly listing off many grey areas that should make me give leeway to others, which includes "I don't know how free willed we are", those definitions of trust, and several other things. They come from different angles, but from a practical perspective, the result is all the same: Give leeway, don't be surprised by irrationality, and keep an open mind about "why" people are doing what they do. Especially I try to be reluctant to assume malintent. Almost no one is *trying* to be the bad guy. It feels a bit dehumanizing (a risk that needs to be watched for), but I suspect it would be better to think of someone as less free-willed, rather than more intentionally evil.
Yep, agreed on the tribes comments. One of my worries is that, with global communication, social media, etc. the effective size of most tribes has suddenly grown too large (and the tribal culture too reinforced) to influence in any meaningful way. At least with the teaching tools handed down to us from history. The obvious answer is "build more powerful tools", but a whole lot of risk lies down that path as well.
These are certainly going to be interesting times.
The medievals distinguished three ways that a word could be used in different connections: univocally, equivocally, and analogically. Faith in sense experience and faith in other people is not the same kind of faith (not univocal), but it’s also not two completely different things (equivocal). There is an analogical relationship between the two senses: in both cases we take a leap of some kind that goes beyond what we can empirically show to be warranted, one that is necessary for (a certain understanding of) human well-being.
I have thought a lot over the years about global villages, and about tribalism, but never until this moment about “global tribalism”—a terrifying thought! And the goal of trying to shape or reform culture in moral ways certainly faces an uphill battle in the information age that enables those who resist reform to “flood the zone with shit,” as one of that ilk memorably put it. Easier to burn bridges than to build them.
Interesting times indeed, in the sense notably if wrongly associated with ancient Chinese curses.
"Global tribalism" - Ick. I hadn't actually been thinking globally, just nationally. Like how, within the past 20 years, every rural area in the US has become "The Confederacy", with literal confederate flags everywhere. That's frightening enough. But maybe we really are starting to see this stuff go global. It appears to be the full intent of the Russian propaganda farms to merge the maga-right in the US in with a global-right tribe, sponsored by Putin's government. We're loosing the chains on some real monsters here.
I've been thinking about faith--and the relationship of human and divine faith--a lot lately, in the context (real, but also metaphorical) of exercise and diet.
Like, even though there are many paths to health, I really believe that if I had less fat on me, there would be a lot of benefits. But I have always had a lot of doubts as to whether it can be done. Should I shift how I eat, exercise three days a week, and so on--at an expense of time with my son, time relaxing, and so on--when I'm not certain that I will receive the benefits? After all, many times I have attempted to make changes, and never really had much of a difference (other than the time I significantly injured my shoulder, in which case the difference was negative.)
I'm about three weeks into a new regimen, though, which means that, somehow, I switched from "I don't believe that I can make change" to "I do believe I'll make change." But it's still faith. I still have doubts whether it will work. And it's a sort of empirical / rational faith. I am still looking at what this does to my energy levels, whether I am becoming stronger, my weight, etc. But as long as I keep doing the work, I am showing that I still believe in my capacity for change. And of course working out, dieting, seeing progress and so on further feed the faith, as I both gain positive benefits and (equally important) begin to assume this way of existing as natural for me, rather than alien.
The question I keep pondering, though, is how far this extends towards my Christian faith. On one hand, it seems obvious that there is a significant overlap. Christians follow "the way," traditional catechism involved a transformation of their way of life, faith heroes like Abraham showed their faith by their actions, and so on.
So there is a significant sense in which "I believe that I can be much healthier" and "I believe in God the Father, almighty maker of Heaven and Earth" are similar statements: judgments around the world that require and can only coexist with a certain allegiance and set of actions. If I truly believe I will become healthier, why wouldn't I persist? If I truly believe God exists and revealed Himself through Christ and that homeless guy talking to me, why wouldn't I treat him to a Chipotle burrito? In both cases, actions reveal (in general) what we really believe.
Which is kinda terrifying, and also why I need to come each Sunday to Mass, where I am told my sins are forgiven, where I am given Christ's body and blood no matter how well I have or haven't believed.
But the question I keep pondering is ... where does this metaphor break? Where is spiritual faith in Christ different from intellectual/emotional faith in diet and exercise? That continues to be a harder question for me.
Not a complete answer, Scott … but, for me at least, I might start here: What “faith” I have in my regimen of diet and exercise is ordered toward that regimen as a means to an end. That is, I trust myself to this course of action for the sake of true goals that I desire for their own sake: for hope of health, comfort, and longevity. My faith in God is not like that. I don’t believe in God for the sake of other things that I care about more; God himself is my ultimate goal. Indeed, everything else that I love and desire in life, even for its own sake—even ends like health, comfort, and longevity—find their ultimate value in God’s love of me and of my neighbor. It is because God loves me and I love God that my desire to be healthy, and therefore to maintain a healthy regimen of diet and exercise, finds its ultimate purpose.
This at least is the goal! Bernard of Clairvaux said we start out loving ourselves for our own sake, and we first learn to love God for our own sake. Eventually we progress to loving God for God’s own sake—but the journey isn’t complete until we learn to love ourselves for God’s sake. Insofar as faith, hope, and love are ultimately one reality, this highlights, I think, how our faith in God, which is also love of God, is different from any other faith or love in our lives.
On Bernard’s four stages of love:
https://greydanus.substack.com/p/four-stages-of-love-st-bernard-of
I really liked reading this essay and I understood almost all of it (I'm no philosopher), but I didn't plan on writing a comment until a little something happened...
As I began reading, I thought you would reference St. John Paul II's encyclical Faith and Reason. (I'm not criticizing its omission.) I have read some of his writings but not that one. Maybe this is a sign that I should soon. Anyways, moments after I finish your essay, my friend turns on the TV and (lo and behold) it's in the middle of an EWTN program featuring a professor talking about how faith and reason informed St. John Paul II's humanism! I'm not going to attach too much meaning to that coincidence, but I still wanted to share it.
Yes, all very intellectual. Seems to me, though, that faith allows one to just follow … and leave all that reasoning stuff to other, lesser suckers.
I…I mean, Jesus tells us that to love God “with your whole mind” as well as your whole hart, soul, and strength is the first and greatest of commandments. Paul in Romans 1 engages in natural theology (“Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made”). I agree with C.S. Lewis:
“The fact that what you are thinking about God Himself (for example, when you are praying) does not mean that you can be content with the same babyish ideas which you had when you were a five-year-old. It is, of course, quite true that God will not love you any the less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have been born with a very second-rate brain. He has room for people with very little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have. The proper motto is not ‘Be good, sweet maid and let who can be clever,’ but ‘Be good, sweet maid, and don’t forget that this involves being as clever as you can.’ God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers.” (Mere Christianity)
Follow what, exactly? As Jewel sings, “We pray to as many gods as there are flowers.” To unbelievers, there are so many religions, how can you avoid being made a sucker?
I don’t agree with the song that our religions are all incommensurate but rather that there are really just a few credible options, and that my own can be defended as high among these possibilities. But that’s the work of thinking, not just trust.
Yeah, this, John. “Just following and leaving all that reasoning stuff to other, lesser suckers” is a religious epistemology enimently amenable to Mormons and Muslims, geocentrists and young-Earth creationists, anti-vaxers and suicide cults. (No moral equivalence implied!)