Josef Pieper (1904-1997) is a 20th century German Thomist. I read his Belief and Faith as an undergraduate and am now re-reading it very carefully. It is an excellent counterbalance to a lot of the current analytic stuff on belief and doxastic voluntarism. What follows is my reconstruction of Pieper's argument for doxastic voluntarism in Belief and Faith. His thesis, to be found in Augustine and Aquinas, is that "Belief rests upon volition." (p. 27. Augustine, De praedestinatione Sanctorum, cap. 5, 10: [Fides] quae in voluntate est . . . .) I shall first present the argument in outline, and then comment on the premises and inferences.
1. Belief and knowledge are mutually exclusive. He who knows does not believe, and he who believes does not know.
Therefore
2. It is not the self-evident truth of the proposition believed that motivates the believer's acceptance of it.
Therefore
3. The believer's acceptance is motivated by the insight that "it is good to regard the subject matter as true and real on the strength of someone else's testimony." (p. 27)
4. "It is the will, not cognition, that acknowledges the good." (p. 27)
Therefore
5. Wherever there is belief, the will is operative. "We believe not because we see, perceive, deduce, something true, but because we desire something good." (p. 27)
Interpretive gloss: We desire contact with the truth, as with something good. But in some cases we are not in a position to know the truth; so we must believe it on the basis of the testimony of a credible witness. We will our acceptance of the testimony of the witness. Our acceptance of the testimony is voluntary. One's coming to believe is thus subject to voluntary control.
Ad (1). Most philosophers nowadays think of knowledge as including belief. Thus, on their use of 'believes' and 'knows,' if S knows that p, then S believes that p, though not conversely. Accordingly, if I know that the sun is shining, by seeing that it is, then I believe that the sun is shining. But Pieper, basing himself on Aquinas, doesn't view the matter in this way. For Pieper, if S believes that p, S unconditionally accepts p as true without knowing whether or not p is true. Accordingly, I do not believe that the sun is shining; I know that it is. This corresponds to ordinary usage. One can imagine Ron Radosh saying, "I don't believe that the Rosenbergs were guilty of espionage for the Soviets; I know they were!" Pieper quotes Aquinas (p.10): "Belief cannot refer to something that one sees. . .; and what can be proved likewise does not pertain to belief." Thus he who knows does not believe, and he who believes does not know.
Ad (2). This is supposed to follow from (1) and it does.
Ad (3). Since I did not see O. J. Simpson kill his ex-wife Nicole, I do not know that he killed her. But I believe he killed her on the basis of a massive amount of mutually supportive facts and testimony. Now what motivates (Aquinas would say 'causes') my unconditional acceptance of the proposition that O.J. killed Nicole? I want contact with the truth because the truth is good. Now I cannot in a case like this achieve contact via knowledge. So if I am to achieve truth- and reality-contact, it must be through belief, which is subordinate to knowledge in value though not included in knowledge.
There is a sort of value-judgment here that needs to be treated fully in a separate post: it is better to achieve reality-contact via belief despite the epistemic risk involved, than to stick to what can strictly be known thereby foregoing reality-contact. We must of course try to avoid error. But the acquisition of truth is also an epistemic desideratum. I would argue that it is a mistake to let one's fear of error deprive one of second-rate reality-contact, i.e., reality-content via belief. Believing a proposition on the basis of credible testimony is admittedly of less value than knowing it; but second-rate reality-contact is better than no reality-contact.
Ad (4). This is a premise and it seems true. Good and evil are not 'visible' except to conative/desiderative beings. If we were merely intellectual beings, mere cognizers, without wish, will, need, desire, appetite, then good and evil would be 'invisible.' This is not to be confused with the presumably false claim that good and evil would not exist in a world without conative/desiderative beings.
Ad (5). To believe that p is to give my unconditional assent to the truth of p. I commit myself to p's truth despite my lack of knowledge of the subject matter. Thus my believing that O.J. killed Nicole is my unconditional acceptance of that proposition on the basis of inconclusive, but adequate, evidence. What motivates my acceptance is my will-to-truth. I am free to believe, to disbelieve, and to suspend jusdgment. How then can anyone deny that belief, disbelief, and suspension of belief are under the control of the will?
Related Posts (on one page):
- Doxastic Voluntarism/Involuntarism and Skeptical Suspension
- Are You a Natural-Born Scribbler? Take the Gide Test
- Hume on Belief and Existence
- Notes on Aristotelian and Stoic Psychology
- On Belief
- Timor Errati et Timor Peccati
- A Dallas Willard-Josef Pieper Connection
- A Pieperian Argument for Doxastic Voluntarism
- Against William Alston Against Doxastic Voluntarism
- Locke, James, Doxastic Voluntarism and Two Bases of Toleration
- Are There Any Beliefs Over Which We Have Direct Voluntary Control?
- Are Any Beliefs Acquired At Will? Any Room for an 'Ethics of Belief'?
Btw, pope Benedict touches briefly on the nature of faith in his recent encyclical letter on hope. Mr. Ratzinger is an interesting guy, and I am sure he is familiar with Pieper, although he does not mention him here.
Ad (1). Pieper, Aquinas: "Belief and knowledge are mutually exclusive. He who knows does not believe, and he who believes does not know." But: "Most philosophers nowadays think of knowledge as including belief." Isn't this a matter of stipulative definition?
Ad (3). "Believing a proposition on the basis of credible testimony is admittedly of less value than knowing it."
Couldn't there be knowledge based on testimony?
Cf. this example: "I take apart a mechanical contrivance, and now I understand why it is that lifting lever A causes the wooden gopher to jump out of hole B. This makes me much more confident in thinking that by lifting A, I will make the gopher jump out of hole B. Indeed, if the contrivance is see-through, it might be impossible for movements of doubt to arise. However, suppose that I know the contrivance is a black box, but I know on the testimony of ten mechanical engineers of absolute probity that they have examined the device, found it easy to understand within their professional competence, and are absolutely certain that if I lift A, the gopher will jump out of B. It may well be that I assign a higher credence here. For instance, I may well realize that my own understanding of mechanical devices is limited, and that things might interact in ways that I do not fully understand. My commitment to the claim based on my own observation may be significantly less."
My point is that I KNOW, i.e., SEE THAT and WHY p (p = if I lift A, the gopher will jump out of B) IS TRUE even in the case of the testimony of the engineers. I see it through my seeing that ten engineers of absolute probity testify that they have examined the device, found it easy to understand within their professional competence, and are absolutely certain that p. But I admit that even if I know (or, I am justified in my believing) that p, I do not know an explanation for p. I can say that I know "why" it is the case that p in the justification-sense, but I do not know "why" p is true in the explanatory sense.
Ad (4). "If we were merely intellectual beings, mere cognizers, without wish, will, need, desire, appetite, then good and evil would be 'invisible.'" Why? Suppose, like Thomists, that every being (ens), inasmuch as it exists, is good; goodnes is a transcendental feature of ens. Would not, then, a possible, finite, merely intellectual person grasp the good, though he would not will (desire, ...) it?
You're welcome. Thanks for mentioning Dallas Willard. I have read some of his work, but did not realize that he had similar views on belief and knowledge. I'll see what I can dig up.
Do you have an interest in Delta blues?
If I may respond to your example:
For the classical tradition of which St. Thomas and Josef Pieper are voices, knowledge means a knowledge of causes. It is irrelevant how certain we are that certain events follow other events, e.g. that a gopher pops up on pushing lever A. If we don't know why pushing the lever causes the gopher to pop up, we don't have knowledge, no matter how confident we are that it will happen.
The standard example here is the chef following a recipe. He may be absolutely certain, from experience, that precisely following the recipe's directions will result in a delicious dish. Yet he may have no idea why he must add a pinch of oregano at one point and heat to boiling at another. St. Thomas would say he has, at best, a "knack" for cooking but not true knowledge (theory).
I think we have trouble wrapping ourselves around the classical viewpoint because, since Descartes, we tend to measure knowledge by certainty. The more certain we are, the more we think we must know. This was not so for the pre-modern philosophers. For them, it was possible to be ignorant yet certain, and also knowledgeable but uncertain.
We are of course free to define knowledge as a function of certainty, such that if we are certain that A will follow B because a trustworthy authority says it is so, then we can say that we know that A will follow B. We are just not thinking with the ancients when we do it. In any case, whatever terms we use, there surely is a distinction between knowing the reasons why a recipe makes a delicious dish, and the confidence that a recipe will work that is based on the testimony of another.
Cheers,
Dave T.
I like your blog!
1. In fact, Descartes does not pursuit any certainty, but clear and distinct perception of truth.
2. When reading philosophy or epistemology, many times one encounters notions of intellectual grasping, seeing that something is the case (e.g., that 1+1=2, or that one is appeared thus and so), of something being (self)evident, clear, or perceived clearly and distinctly, with (ultimate) clarity, and the like. (Even Bill V and Spur, the notable commenter, write this way.) Especially phenomenologists treat such notions very thoroughly. It really seems to me that these concepts are extremely important and central, not only in epistemology and for the notion of and standards of what is called "rationality". I would say the nub of the notion of philosophical knowledge consists precisely in the concept of special and peculiar "seeing" something clearly and distinctly (and with certainty); and that this type of knowledge is paradigmatical for other types of cognition we also call "knowledge", "justified belief", etc. Some propositions are sometimes clearly true, some propositions are sometimes not clearly true. And we do like to have a clear handle of things. Cf.: "Hey, what do you mean? Why do you claim it? Could you be clear, please? Please, be concise and clear in your writing", etc. We earn for this peculiar of clarity (and distinctness). Two philosophers earned for clear and distinct (Descartes) or evident (Husserl) knowledge extremely deliberately.
3. Don't you think that also St. Paul has in his mind, among others, the notion of such knowledge - a special seeing - in Romans 8:24 or 1 Cor 13:12?
4. So, in principle, one can have knowledge (in the sketched sense) based on testimony.
5. For sure, McGrews think their new cumulative, testimonial case for the resurrection of Jesus, which I recommend as utterly fascinating, by the way, is properly called "knowledge"; though it may be that they would balk at my points (2) and (3) as unintelligible and with no clear (!) sense. I admit my talk is mysterious, still, it refers to something basic and indispensable.
There should have been: Descartes does not pursuit every certainty ...
(English is not my mother tongue.)
***
You're welcome, Thomas.
First, you are going to have to explain the prima facie non sequitar from Dallas Willard to Delta Blues. As for the Delta Blues...hum...I hate to admit it, but I am such a novice on many musical genres. Although my musical tastes, interests,collection and personal abilities have increased over the recent years, I'm not familiar with Delta Blues. One might think that 5 years in NW Arkansas might make one more experienced with it, but NW Arkansas and the Arkansas delta are like 2 different countries in one state.
I'll end this unrelated post with this...One thing that draws national attention and that I did enjoy along the same musical lines occurs right in my hometown. Here's a link to the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.wvfest.com/">Walnut Valley Music Festival</a> for those interested.
I was looking for a way to link to you since I mentioned you in the Willard post. So I found this which mentions a Michael Harper as a participant in a conference on the Delta blues at Arkansas State U. Of course it doesn't follow that this man is you.
I take it you are still at U of Ark but don't have a webpage.
Anyway, your comment was very fruitful and got me reading a lot more Willard. Merry Christmas.
Your point about knowledge based on testimony is very good. Let me think about it.
Thank you for the kind words.
I think Descartes was pursuing certainty as an end with "clear and distinct ideas" as the means:
With respect to the New Testament, I think the passages you cite refer to knowledge infused directly through divine grace. I don't doubt that this is possible and I hold, with St. Thomas Aquinas, that faith is a form of knowledge. But I also hold with St. Thomas that there is a distinction between natural and supernatural knowledge; that is, knowledge that is in principle available to anyone through our natural endowments and with which philosophy is directly concerned; and knowledge that comes to us only through divine grace and the infused virtues of faith, hope and love. We don't obtain the latter type of knowledge merely by hearing the Gospel - that is, purely through testimony - but finally only through the action of the Holy Spirit. That is why not everyone who hears the Gospel becomes a Christian, because not everyone knows the Gospel merely by hearing it. It's not testimony that forms the basis of supernatural knowledge in the N.T., but the Holy Spirit. Hearing the Gospel is just the occasion by which the Holy Spirit may act.
Speaking purely philosophically (that is, in terms of purely natural knowledge), I'm looking forward to hearing what Bill has to say concerning the relationship between testimony and knowledge. As far as I am concerned, it is philosophically crucial to maintain the distinction within ourselves between what we know directly through a knowledge of causes and what we are related to only indirectly through the testimony of others. I see this as essential to maintaining philosophical freedom, which is based on not falling into the trap of thinking that we know that which we do not know.
For example: We hear repeatedly the following two statements or ones similar to them:
1. "90% of climate scientists say that man-made global warming is a fact."
2. "90% of climate scientists say that man-made global warming will have dire consequences in the coming century unless we do something to correct it now."
Given that it is true that 90% of climate scientists say such things, does it follow that I know that #1 and #2 are true? I think it is crucial to philosophical freedom to maintain that I do not know that #1 and #2 are true, but that I only have reasons to believe that they are true. The only ones who might truly know that #1 and #2 are true are the individual climate scientists intimately involved with the state of the science involved. The only way for me to know #1 and #2 is to become a climate scientist myself and analyze the science directly.
A distinctive feature of the modern world is that we have experts on every possible subject. A lot of people think such experts provide a shortcut to knowledge, that somehow one "knows" something merely by repeating what an expert says about it. What such people end up having is a head full of opinions that they mistake for knowledge - which is why Socrates is the most-needed philosopher today. In the specific case of global-warming, I'm tired of being told by non-scientists that they "know" that global-warming is a fact.
As for knowledge based on testimony, IF I know that (i) the scientists of absolute probity testify that they have examined the warming, found it easy to understand within their professional competence, and are absolutely certain that man-made global warming is a fact, then I can truly say that KNOW that (ii) man-made global warming is a fact. But could I, in the given case, know that (i) without becoming a climate scientist? Plausibly not. But there still could be some instance of knowledge based on testimony. For a detailed scenario of such a case, cf., again, the testimonial, cumulative case for the Resurrection by McGrews.
<b><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3001.htm#4">ST 2a2ae, 1.4</a>: Whether the object of faith can be something seen?</b>
<blockquote>Faith implies assent of the intellect to that which is believed. Now the intellect assents to a thing in two ways. First, through being moved to assent by its very object, which is known either by itself (as in the case of first principles, which are held by the habit of understanding), or through something else already known (as in the case of conclusions which are held by the habit of science). Secondly the intellect assents to something, not through being sufficiently moved to this assent by its proper object, but through an act of choice, whereby it turns voluntarily to one side rather than to the other: and if this be accompanied by doubt or fear of the opposite side, there will be opinion, while, if there be certainty and no fear of the other side, there will be faith.
Now those things are said to be seen which, of themselves, move the intellect or the senses to knowledge of them. Wherefore it is evident that neither faith nor opinion can be of things seen either by the senses or by the intellect.</blockquote>
<b><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3001.htm#5">ST 2a2ae, 1.5</a>: Whether those things that are of faith can be an object of science [Science is certain knowledge of a demonstrated conclusion through its demonstration]?</b>
<blockquote>All science is derived from self-evident and therefore "seen" principles; wherefore all objects of science must needs be, in a fashion, seen.
Now as stated above (4), it is impossible that one and the same thing should be believed and seen by the same person. Hence it is equally impossible for one and the same thing to be an object of science and of belief for the same person. It may happen, however, that a thing which is an object of vision or science for one, is believed by another: since we hope to see some day what we now believe about the Trinity, according to 1 Corinthians 13:12: "We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face": which vision the angels possess already; so that what we believe, they see. On like manner it may happen that what is an object of vision or scientific knowledge for one man, even in the state of a wayfarer, is, for another man, an object of faith, because he does not know it by demonstration.
Nevertheless that which is proposed to be believed equally by all, is equally unknown by all as an object of science: such are the things which are of faith simply. Consequently faith and science are not about the same things.</blockquote>
It seems that the codes didn't work in my post.