One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed reading about Leah Libresco‘s conversion is it’s such a clear, current and vivid illustration of a phenomenon whose existence many would fervently like to wish away, would like to declare impossible. Namely, Libresco is demonstrably intelligent, with an actively questioning mind, and young; and she once actively declared herself belonging to the atheism that she has now rejected in favour of Catholicism. Many people find the existence of such a person really hard to take.
The clearest example of this is JT Eberhard, a young atheist blogger who remains a young atheist blogger. In his reaction, Eberhard proclaims: “I’m reading through all her posts and I’m floored. Leah’s really smart. I cannot believe the things she’s writing are coming from her mind.” How could a smart atheist possibly become “religious”? Surely that’s not possible. How could this happen?
It’s not only atheists who have such a problem. Travelling in Thailand long ago, I once spoke to an Australian fellow backpacker of partially Thai ethnic origin, who was persuaded by Buddhism and thought Christianity was “crap”. I mentioned that there were significant if small numbers of Thai Christians, that I’d been to a Catholic church constructed like a Thai temple. He responded, “Oh, they must be from those animistic hill tribes, right?” When I said no, they were Bangkokians who had converted from Buddhism, he was stunned. How is that possible? How could smart, civilized Buddhists possibly embrace Catholicism?
The answer is: the same way a smart Catholic becomes atheistic or Buddhist. You start by recognizing that you don’t know everything, that your current worldview has gaps. You spend a lot of time reading, discussing and thinking about the great perennial questions that have occupied human beings for millennia – what is good and bad, and why? should we immerse ourselves in mundane everyday life or seek to transcend it? – and you explore the worldviews of those who do not agree with you. Gradually you come to realize that they have figured things out that you hadn’t – so that their worldview, as a whole, makes a lot more sense than you thought yours did. And then it makes sense to adopt the bulk of it. As an old BBS tagline once had it: if the exceptions outnumber the rules, exchange them. (My own awakening to Buddhism was a weaker version of this process, one that doesn’t illustrate it as clearly as Libresco’s does: I never proclaimed myself a Buddhist, but I did come to accept key Buddhist doctrines in a way that required rejecting significant parts of my previous worldview.)
This process of intellectual conversion can happen both from “religion” to atheism and from atheism to “religion” – just as it does from one “religion” to another. Even if we grant that only one of these worldviews (whether atheism, a single “religion”, or some specific combination) happens to be true, there are still going to be many intelligent people who move away from it. The big questions have been examined in great detail by many towering intellects over thousands of years, and there continue to be very intelligent people on each side. If the truth is somewhere out there to be found – and I suspect that it is – it is a truth so subtle, so nuanced, so detailed, so precise that one would be very lucky to reach it within a single lifetime. The errors available on opposing sides have enough grains of truth in them that they can be very persuasive to those who do not see the whole truth, even if they grasp a relatively large fragment of it.
The classical Jain tradition encapsulated a view something like this in its doctrine of anekāntavāda (many-sidedness), often expressed in the parable of the blind men grasping the elephant. One man grasps the legs and says an elephant is thick and tough, one grasps the tail and says an elephant is thin and flexible, and so on. We’re all grasping at a partial and one-sided truth; nobody gets the whole. The difficulty with such views comes with the question: how do you then know the whole truth is out there? The Jains were able to say: we limited humans can’t see the whole truth, but the >tīrthaṅkaras, the superhuman Jains who have followed the path to its completion and attained supernatural awakening, can indeed. A similar insight seems to animate many Christians – as I understand Bishop Berkeley, he defended his claim that everything is ideas in the mind by saying ultimately it’s an idea in God’s mind.
But then the question arises: does this kind of viewpoint, this attention to one’s own partiality, make sense for those of us who don’t believe there are such omniscient beings? Without the perfect being who can see the whole elephant, how do we know the elephant is out there, and not just the portion we happen to touch?
Well, for one thing, we can talk to the other blind men, and we can do it in a constructive way. Rather than arguing over whether an elephant is thick and tough or whether it’s thin and flexible, the blind men can try to infer how all these views might be true at once if one is grasping a different part. That still leaves the possibility of additional vistas nobody sees, but we can still take our best shot. Even the idea of a whole and larger truth is itself a best guess. We don’t have certainty about most matters, including that one; only an omniscient being could have that. But then the positing of an omniscient being doesn’t solve that problem – for we are not ourselves that being. The very idea that there are omniscient beings could itself turn out to be partial, superseded by a higher truth. What a recognition of partiality does is remind us to doubt, to acknowledge uncertainty even as we try to grasp higher and less partial truths – we just need to remember that we still need to live and act even in the face of this doubt.
In Eberhard’s case, Libresco has agreed to a dialogue with him, which I greatly look forward to. From what Eberhard has written so far, it sounds like he sincerely wants to know Libresco’s reasons and understand her; he’s ready to have his mind opened. And let me not risk any confusion here: by “have his mind opened” I do not mean that he’s likely to convert to Catholicism or even away from atheism, just that, if his dialogue is really entered into with the good faith he proclaims, he’s likely to begin to start seeing the real reasons underlying the side he disagrees with. He’s already learned, to his astonishment, that it’s possible for a smart person to convert from atheism to Catholicism; now he will learn how it’s possible. I suspect those of us who watch the dialogue happen will learn some very interesting things as well. Hopefully, everyone involved will exit the process knowing parts of the elephant they had not previously grasped.
EDIT, 7 Aug 2012: The BBS tagline I quoted above originally read “if the exceptions outnumber the rules, change them.” It should have been “exchange them”, and I’ve changed it accordingly.
Leah and I will be discussing her conversion on our blogs here in about a week.
If it turns out her reasons for converting suck, I’ll be expecting you to admit it.
That’s fair, JT. I’m certainly hoping they turn out strong (and what she’s said so far give me hope), because it’s such a good illustration: she’s not the only person I’ve seen who converted away from atheism for intellectually sophisticated reasons, but her case is one of the clearest. I’m fairly new to her blog, so for all I know it could well turn out to be completely shallow. We’ll see. Looking forward to your exchange one way or another.
What would it mean that they “suck”? I can tell you many good reasons why I (e.g.) married Mr. XYZ, but the ultimate choice is and remains mine. If you don’t share it, would you say that my reasons suck?
Elisa, I think the reason why Mr. Eberhard needs to find that Christian beliefs “suck” is that atheism depends on theism. Atheism is essentially a philosophy that tries to prove a negative — or that depends on proving another philosophy wrong.
If god is truly not an issue for one’s philosophy, then one would simply be a non-theist. One could then appreciate that even beliefs that are wrong can sometimes be expedient toward something that is true — encouraging cultivation of compassion or virtue, for example. Or inspiring great works of Art. What a shame to stand in Chartres cathedral and not be able to let go of your thoughts and participate in the mind of awe that created that building!
JW: “If god is truly not an issue for one’s philosophy, then one would simply be a non-theist.”
I don’t see how God can fail to be an “issue” for any form of philosophical inquiry.
This is because the existence of God (presupposing that the concept of God is coherent)is a crucial issue for human understanding of the world and human flourishing.
Why?
If God exists, then it follows that there is an ultimate explanation for the existence and nature of the cosmos.
If God exists, then attaining God-realization,i.e., attaining experience and knowledge of God, achieving attunement with God, etc., is the supreme good for human beings. It follows that it would be rational for human beings to dedicate themselves to achieving this supreme good.
Hence, if one is philosophical, one cannot be a non-theist, i.e., someone for whom the existence of God is not an issue.
How this issue (the existence of God) can be resolved is another critical issue of philosophy.
Two points here:
1. Belief is not simply a matter of personal choice; the whole idea is it’s about truth. I can choose to believe that the world sits on the back of an elephant, but if I do so, I am wrong. I think it demeans atheism, Christianity, Buddhism and any other tradition to treat them as mere matters of personal preference, like flavours of ice cream. Maybe there is a god; maybe there isn’t; or maybe the universe is structured in such a complex way that a god could both be said to exist and not to exist depending on how one phrases the question. But the existence of a round earth isn’t a matter of preference, and neither is the existence of gods. The iṣṭadevatā tradition says which god you worship is up to personal preference – but that assumes in the first place that they are all in some important sense real.
2. Even to the extent that personal choices are involved – as in the marriage analogy – on any important decision that choice is still based on reasons, and those reasons can be good or bad. If I marry someone because their flattery makes me feel good, but they beat me and steal my money, then I have made a bad decision. It is of course usually impolite to criticize one’s choice of marriage partners in everyday conversation, but it would not be impolite with a psychotherapist; similarly, while one might refrain from criticizing others’ traditions at the dinner table, it is entirely appropriate in a forum for cross-cultural philosophical reflection. (Insults are still inappropriate, but criticism does not require insult.)
I agree that there might be reasons (good or bad), but I also think that the ultimate choice remains personal, especially when it comes to (e.g.) Catholicism vs. another confession.
JT, you may want to pursue some criticisms of Libresco’s “reasons” I’ve offered in my blog:
http://thebaloneydetective.com/2012/06/25/librescus-baloney/
One of the central questions pertaining to her “conversion” is this: Why convert to Catholicism rather than Mormonism or Protestantism? Why convert to a sect of Christianity rather than Islam? (Incidentally, I wonder about the reaction in ultra-tolerant North America had she announced a conversion to Islam!)
If it’s all about the notion of a being embodying moral perfection, I fail to see the rationality of her choice of Catholicism over Protestantism or even over Islam.
In fact, if indeed she is driven by the need to believe in a being embodying moral perfection, then Christianity is the wrong choice!
The notion that God condemns you to eternal damnation for disbelief in “Him” is central to Christianity.
Whatever it is, such a being cannot be all-loving or morally perfect. There are great human beings who would put this God of Catholicism to shame!
I can only hope that the belief in an all-loving being who also condemns you to eternal damnation for disbelief isn’t considered a mark of “intellectual sophistication”!
But, given the peculiar resilience and persistence of irrational beliefs and judgments in the province of philosophy and religion, that may be a tall order.
Thanks, Amod, you got to the core of the problem when you described the attitude of atheists or Buddhists towards conversions to Christianity (or Islam, I suspect). Christianity (if not the fundamental type of Christianity which appeals to uncertain teens) seems to be just a left-over for people who have been educated within it and never reached the critical point of questioning their pre-suppositions. This in spite of centuries of theological thinking, and —most surprisingly— in spite of the media coverage of the pope and other key-figures within Christianity. It is so weired that it is hard to believe!
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion (Francis Bacon)
“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion (Francis Bacon)”
There were great philosophers who were either atheists (Hume, Mill, Bentham, Russell, Schopenhauer), or agnostics, or who subscribed to non-standard forms of theism (Spinoza).
So, it is false that atheism is evidence of “little philosophy”.
But I agree that philosophical depth does include reflection on the phenomenon of religion.
However, this does not imply that philosophical depth has to take the form of religious belief.
A list of philosophers who converted to Christianity:
A. MacIntyre, A. Flew, M. Adler, P.van Inwagen, C.S.Lewis, V. Reppert, E. Stein, M. Dummett, P. Geach, E. Anscombe, T. Merton, Bede Griffiths. Raissa and Jacques Maritain. There are probably others that I’ve missed. Tertullian and Augustine in the Ancient World and 50 phiosophers and Rhetors converted by Katherine (legend?)
I find that most of these conversions came about through a mystical experience of some kind and only the first three are intellectually motivated. It is perhaps significant that they were mature men who had spent a considerable amount of time immersed in philosophy and had so to speak hit rock bottom like alcoholics with a good prognosis according to AA. I wouldn’t expect much to come from the dialogue between J.T. and Leah other than ‘no empirical reason and therefore not rational’ versus ‘metaphysical principle and therefore rational’.
Let the tourney commence!
Thanks for the observation about maturity. There’s definitely something to be said for the way certain types of religious doctrine and attendant practices shape a life over time. I’ve always been of the opinion that religion is ultimately about human flourishing, not theology which is merely a contributing factor for some people. The former, though variously defined or described by different elephant observers, can be “felt” in wise people of all stripes and colors, the kind of people who seem to have a proverb or story for every occasion. Whatever Ms. Libresco will say about the coherence of the Catholic system and how it allows her to better bolster certain philosophical positions of which she is certain, I wonder if the decisive argument for her (as it was for a number of intelligent young converts to religion I’ve met) will have been the difference in the way her life feels as a Catholic–someone whose very “substance” is now being patterned by her participation in a cumulative tradition that survives as an evolving but integral whole whose main purpose (yes it has a certain collective agency!) is to help the individuals of its “flock” feel fulfilled, and not just in some predefined simplistic way. She’s already alluded to this in an interview on CNN in which she mentioned the virtues of being part of the Catholic community (i.e. being able to reach out to other people to whom presumably she now has access, to help facilitate their moral development, rather than being simply focused on her own). Looking forward to the dialogue.
Flew became a deist, not Christian. C.S. Lewis was not a philosopher.
Note that I think deism is reasonably defensible, but once you start talking about revelation, the whole thing absolutely falls to pieces.
Terror management theory and cognitive science of religion explain the history of religion *much* better then the interventionist deity hypothesis.
Steve:
In a previous post I made it clear that I was widening the concept of philosophy to cover those who think deeply about the meaning of life etc. and not just professional/academic philosophers. In any case most of them come into that category. Flew was a deist, true. You are right that an explanation that you would accept re God experience takes the form of an explanation that you would accept. How were the others on that list terrorised? How was their ‘cognition’ managed? Are you proposing some sort of covert brain washing? Was their port drugged?
Thill:
How does reason arrive at the concept of God within the Vedic tradition when it is constantly being stated that the existence of God/Brahma etc is known only through the Vedas and that it is beyond reason. Is it just irrationalism?
very well put, Jim, thanks.
“….a phenomenon whose existence many would fervently like to wish away, would like to declare impossible. Namely, Libresco is demonstrably intelligent, with an actively questioning mind, and young; and she once actively declared herself belonging to the atheism that she has now rejected in favour of Catholicism. Many people find the existence of such a person really hard to take.”
It’s no mystery if you take into account the fact of “divided rationality” in human beings, i.e., being rational in one domain and irrational in another domain, or at least, suspending one’s standards of rationality and evidence in another domain.
Whether theism is rational or irrational to subscribe to is an open issue. (I would add that there is dire need to extricate the philosophical core of theism from the cobwebs of arcane religious belief-systems. Even a sophisticated theist such as Richard Swinburne is unable to do this and his defence of theism is vitiated by the intermixture of theistic claims with all sorts of irrational Christian dogmas.)
However, it is irrational to believe in the dogmas of Catholicism, e.g., claims to infallibility, immaculate conception, resurrection, eternal damnation, day of judgment, transubstantiation, the reality of witchcraft, the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope, etc., etc., etc.
Therefore, any real case of conversion to Catholicism, on the part of an otherwise intelligent and rational human being, is probably a case of “divided rationality”.
On the other hand, if the conversion is for reasons of securing media attention, fending off persecution, social and financial support, etc., and the person does not sincerely believe in all that they now profess to believe, it may be a case of prudence, and, hence, not irrational. So, it may not be a case of “divided rationality”.
If you live in super-tolerant America, and outside of insulated enclaves of liberal professors, is professing atheism, or announcing your conversion to Christianity, really in your interest? The question answers itself quickly!
I suspect that rational disagreement is not only possible, but inevitable. This isn’t to say that *any* disagreement is rational. A fundamentalist who claims the Earth is 6,000 years old is just irrational. The sort of challenge Amod is hoping we have here is much more philosophically interesting. There are intelligent theists who have some reasons in favor of their beliefs that aren’t prima facie insane. I happen to disagree with these reasons, but I can respect people who put some thought into it. These questions are really hard, and I doubt any of us are quite smart enough to find definitive answers.
Here’s an example. The problem of evil (or my teenage version of it) was a huge factor in my turn to atheism. Recently I’ve learned that philosophers of religion distinguish between logical and evidential versions: the logical version says that belief in the traditional God of Western monotheism is logically incoherent, whereas the evidential version says that this God is merely unlikely to exist given the existence of pervasive suffering. Some theists’ responses to the problem of evil (especially John Hick’s) have convinced me that there are some logically-possible scenarios in which a good God might allow suffering. Nonetheless, I’m still convinced by the evidential version; the logical compatibility of God and suffering doesn’t tell us anything about whether God and suffering actually do both exist, and suffering gives us a pretty good reason to doubt that God exists. Can I prove a negative or be certain? Of course not. But an atheist need not do any such thing, nor – and here’s the rub many of my fellow atheists dislike – need a theist. Our epistemic situation is such that we can all look at the same evidence and reasons and still disagree. Maybe it’s a temperament issue, maybe some people are really irrational after all. I’m not sure, but I doubt these sorts of disagreements are going to go away any time soon.
1. EM: “Our epistemic situation is such that we can all look at the same evidence and reasons and still disagree.”
Why? Clearly, it must be because:
1. We disagree on whether a conclusion is implied by that evidence and set of reasons.
OR
2. We disagree on whether a conclusion is strongly supported by that evidence and set of reasons.
In either case, assuming that there are shared ideas about validity, soundness, etc., we must have different assumptions or unstated reasons.
All we need to do then is to make explicit those unstated assumptions and apply the standards of a sound argument to the competing arguments.
2. Thus, both a theist and an atheist can look at the same examples of suffering and still think that those examples are consistent with their respective conclusions on the existence of God ONLY BECAUSE they have different unstated assumptions about the meaning and value of suffering.
A Hindu theist may have the unstated assumption that the fawn burnt to death in a forest fire had to undergo that suffering due to the laws of karma. The Hindu theist doesn’t see the fawn in purely naturalist terms. In her view, the fawn is actually an embodied soul with a burden of karma.
The atheist, of course, takes a purely naturalist view of the fawn.
Thus, unstated conflicting assumptions, one which is naturalist and the other “supernaturalist” play a central role in this disagreement between the atheist and theist on whether the case of a fawn burnt to death by a forest fire is a case of suffering which undermines the claim that there is an all-loving God.
This is the reason why I am now inclined to consider the central issue as one of conflict between a naturalistic and a supernaturalistic approach to the world.
A systematic investigation of supernaturalism, the coherence of the central concepts, the explanatory power of the appeal to supernatural beings, the issue of whether there are good inferences to the best explanation in terms of supernaturalism, and so on, is needed to resolve many of the issues pertaining to theism and other religious beliefs.
I love your post and essentially agree. My take is this:
What many Atheists and your traveling Buddhist acquaintance did not understand are probably three important principles
(1) we do not make religious choices primarily for intellectual reasons.
(2) we are highly compartmentalized.
(3) we are rarely aware of what makes us decide things. we make up “just so” stories that satisfy our listeners and remain blind to the mysterious complex working of minds we are deluded to thinking we control. Maybe this is many-sidedness.
These people not only don’t understand this about others nor can they see it in themselves.
I personally don’t think Leah really knows why she converted. I think her conversion serves her well for now and her smart mind can spin a convincing story of the need for a moral compass. I wish her very well on her new voyage.
Sabio, while I agree with several things you say here, I think I disagree with the general thrust. Most conversions are not made for intellectual reasons, but that doesn’t mean all are not, and the whole point of this post as I see it was to emphasize that this is a pretty clear case one that was. And I think that’s an absolutely crucial point to acknowledge if we are to recognize that traditions make competing truth claims and there are legitimate ways to sort between them.
Clearly there a large number of unconscious factors underlies all human decision-making; but that includes intellectual decision-making of all kinds. I don’t see Libresco’s conversion as qualitatively different from a scientist converting from one scientific paradigm to another: say, a paleontologist moving from the theory that an asteroid impact killed the dinosaurs to the theory that the dinosaurs died out because they were poorly adapted to other changing conditions. There’s a pattern of accumulating doubt about the received theoretical framework, but there’s one significant line of reasoning that calls it to the fore and makes the person “switch sides”, after which the previous doubts make more sense; and there are no doubt many underlying psychological and sociological factors going on as well, but there is nevertheless still something decisive about the reasons.
Re. Sabio’s point #3,
“we are rarely aware of what makes us decide things. we make up “just so” stories that satisfy our listeners and remain blind to the mysterious complex working of minds we are deluded to thinking we control.”
I rather suspect this is true, and there is a growing body of psychological research (not to mention What the Buddha Taught) that lends ammunition to anyone who likes to talk this way. (Christian theology of grace has never quite settled the issue of motive in conversion, either. Augustine, for instance, went back and forth on whether God persuaded the will, or simply changed it.)
But it raises the question, What would count as knowing why one had decided? Holding a distillate of the decision in a test-tube? Plotting a graph of all the moments that led up to the “moment” of conscious decision? A Eureka moment on a Viennese couch? Doesn’t the very act of evaluating any evidence of “what really motivated me” involve its own decision, a deciding that this is evidence? And in that case, don’t we back ourselves into a series of just-so stories– unless we grant that there is such a thing as an unconstrained evaluation of our own decision-making? But of course, if we admit that, we don’t need to open the issue of “evidence” at all. (I think Wittgenstein on private language provides an analogous investigation.)
These are interesting points. The discussion here makes me think a lot about the Kant-ish distinction between first- and third-person reasons for action, which I discussed here: https://loveofallwisdom.com/2012/01/what-it-means-to-have-a-reason-for-action/
There are always psychological and sociological causes to any action we may take, ones of which we may not necessarily be aware – third-person reasons. But the first-person reasons are the ones we “own”, our reasons for doing what we do. Kant would have said that for the concept of a choice or decision to be meaningful at all, we need to think in terms of the latter.
Sabio:
You are perhaps implying that conversion is purely a matter of brain chemistry and that it is purely subjective and therefore not a matter for science. Not being a matter for science might for some indicate a deficiency in reality or in reality testing on the part of the convert.
@ skholiast:
It seems you understand.
As to your question “what would count …” — It would be hard to be certain. Checking diary enteries, asking lots of intimate friends, asking more neutral observers, doing introspection and waiting over time to introspect again. All these would help in weighing a ventured guess at “why one had decided”. But the degree of certainty needed only depends on what value or need one has for the information. All these are tough, tough questions. I don’t think there is a think as a clear unconstrained evaluation of our own decision-making though I am convinced there is the illusion of that.
So, you will have to tell me if we agree.
@ michael reidy:
I don’t think we should hesitate to approach anything with the scientific method and our best empirical tools. Perhaps you misunderstood me, or perhaps not.
Yes, Sabio, I think we provisionally agree. At least, I’m deciding to call it agreement! Short of enlightenment, in which I would see “clearly and distinctly” the nature of Mind and all my own past lives and karma (not that I admit this cosmology, I’m just adopting it for present purposes), I don’t think I ever get more than better and better-refined just-so stories.
I also agree with Thill — which clearly makes this an auspicious occasion ;) — that there is a useful distinction between cause and reason here; but I admit a grey area of “unconscious motives,” which function like reasons but of which I am not consciously aware, though I might be brought to awareness of them. (I also think that the very idea of a reason as opposed to a cause undercuts radical naturalism, but that is a much broader argument.)
If an action or decision, e.g., conversion, deciding to go the temple or church, of mine has CAUSES, it makes sense to suppose that I may not be aware of all or any of them.
But it make no sense to say that I may not be aware of my own REASONS for the action or decision.
Sabio: to clarify,
I probably agree with you on (1) but disagree on (3). The annals of those who have converted due to some mystical experience are filled with testimony about its power to change their lives. How is this to be assessed? How would science get to grips with a subjective assurance?
Skholiast: “I also agree with Thill — which clearly makes this an auspicious occasion ;) — that there is a useful distinction between cause and reason here; but I admit a grey area of “unconscious motives,” which function like reasons but of which I am not consciously aware, though I might be brought to awareness of them.”
Glad to have your comment, Skholiast. I hope this doesn’t detract from the auspiciousness of the occasion, but since there is no difference between having a motive for doing x and having a reason for doing x, talk of “unconscious motives” is tantamount to talk of “unconscious reasons”.
And the concept of an “unconscious reason”, a reason I have for doing x and of which I am unaware, is incoherent.
Hence, the concept of an “unconscious motive” is also incoherent.
An agent may not acknowledge a motive or reason when it is ascribed to her, e.g., a pecuniary motive in marrying a man. But this does not imply that she is does not know whether she married for a pecuniary motive or not (of course, she may have married for multiple motives or reasons, including the pecuniary one).
If the appropriate evidence is presented to show that she did marry for a pecuniary motive, and the agent now acknowledged it, this does not imply that she has acquired some knowledge she did not possess earlier. She now simply acknowledges having that motive or reason whereas earlier she simply denied having that motive or reason.
I don’t think there is a distinction since I don’t think there are “unconscious motives or reasons”, but since you countenance it, how would you possibly distinguish between a case in which one is not aware of a motive and one in which it is simply not acknowledged?
Michael: “Thill: How does reason arrive at the concept of God within the Vedic tradition when it is constantly being stated that the existence of God/Brahma etc is known only through the Vedas and that it is beyond reason. Is it just irrationalism?”
Since the Vedas are simply the expressions of the thoughts, feelings, and visions of the Rishis or Seers, the appeal to the authority of the Vedas is actually an appeal to the authority of the Rishis or Seers, a form of appeal to “expert testimony”, the “expertise” or knowledge of the Rishis concerning the existence of Brahman.
What does it mean to say that the existence of Brahman is known ONLY through the Vedas and that “it is beyond reason”? Clearly, to appeal to the authority of the experience and knowledge of the Rishis, concerning the existence and nature of Brahman, is a form of argument, and, hence, a case of recourse to reason!
I think the argument “I know that the Shruti proclaims the existence of Brahman. Therefore, I know that Brahman exists.” commits the non sequitur fallacy. The conclusion does not follow.
The use of “know” is illegitimate in the conclusion. The correct word is “belief”. So, the argument ought to be: “I know that the Shruti proclaims the existence of Brahman. The Shruti is a record of the reliable testimony (concerning the existence of Brahman) of the Rishis. Therefore, I believe that Brahman exists.”
If the second premise of this argument is plausible, then the belief avowed in the conclusion is rational belief, but it is still belief and not knowledge.
The testimony of others, even if it is reliable, can only show the rationality of belief in the content of testimony. Hence, accepting the Shruti, or, in other words, accepting the testimony of the Rishis, still doesn’t yield knowledge of the existence of Brahman.
If knowledge of Brahman is actually a case of its self-revelation to a recipient (Shruti: “It reveals itself by choice.” Brahman is not an entity we can discover by our own efforts), then this revelation must be completely transparent and there can be no doubt that it is Brahman which has revealed itself.
Hence, this self-revelation of Brahman is the only situation in which one would be justified in claiming that one knows that Brahman exists.
Thill,
the distinction, if any, between unconscious and unacknowledged is a vexed one and I think would lead the comment thread far afield, so I will just acknowledge that you raise pertinent questions that I won’t exhaustively respond to. As I recall, Sartre in Being and Nothingness held that the whole notion of unconsciousness was incoherent and “in bad faith”. I should clarify though that I did not mean to make a rigorous distinction between “motive” and “reason”. Such a distinction might be useful for some purposes but I was using them more or less interchangeably. In any case, if you prefer to say that a person is brought to acknowledge a motive rather than that this motive is brought to consciousness, I have no ready objection. Probably I could think of one, but I doubt I would always find it valid.
Thill:
In the vedic tradition that I am most familiar with the doctrine of apoureshya (not of human origin) applies to the Vedas. They are ‘sruti’ or heard by the rishis but their origin is not personal. At the beginning of each cosmic projection the same Vedas are produced as were there in previous cosmic projections. The Vedas are a self-validating source that is incorrigible when dealing with its own subject matter and not so when dealing with matters that can be established empirically. By definition then the notion of an intellectual conversion does not have any validity. There are no arguments for the existence of God that are presented in the manner of the 5 ways, ontological argument etc.
Of course in the advaitic tradition the fundamental unity of being is natural and is strictly something that is never attained. It is merely realised to be the case. One must clear away the impediments and the need to understand may be one of them in the more austere dispensations. The Zen folk hold a similar view.
@ Amod Lele:
Ooops, I missed your comment back on 7/5 at 3:36 pm. (I wish the software numbered the comments.)
I love that you said, “I think I disagree with the general thrust”.
I think that most conversions (in any direction) are made due of a hodgepodge of factors. Many factors are invisible, others we are deceived on and some we are accurate on but only if we don’t claim them as sole factors given the nature of invisible factors and self-deceit.
So in this post [great thread, btw], are you saying that Libresco’s conversion was intellectual and that she correctly identified the real reason for her conversion? [I must admit that your writing style is hard for me too consume and distill main points.]
@ skholiast
I don’t believe in any god offering Grace or any past lives or any karma. So it is hard for me to dialogue with those analogies.
@ Thill
You said,
I may have miss used your uses of the word “Reason”. If “my own reason” means “what I tell others my purpose, intention or motivation for change is” then sure, we may be aware of what we said, but what we said is often highly blind — as I said above. Perhaps we agree on that.
Finally, to all, Reason and Emotion are inextricably linked. There is no thinking without emotion. [fingers crossed, hope I did not say that too strongly]
Thanks, Sabio. Okay, now I think we’re getting closer to each other here. I agree that there are multiple factors at play in any large-scale change of belief (and again this includes changes between scientific theories as much as it does “religious” conversions). And that holds true in Libresco’s case as well. Still, I think that we can identify some factors as more important than others, and people are often though not always aware of the most important factors. While there’s not enough detail about Libresco’s case yet to give much detail, I think that to this point it’s reasonable to take her account of her conversion at her word and say that the intellectual reasons she cited were the most important factor – though I would imagine that she herself would admit they’re not the only factor.
Thanks for your note that it’s hard to distill main points in my writing. That’s something for me to keep in mind. In published works (including my dissertation), I try to stick to a tight style that aims very clearly at getting a point across. The blog’s style is more conversational in nature, taking occasional tangents and often starting off with story rather than argument. I think there are advantages to that, but I do often have key points that I want to make and I would like to think about ensuring they don’t get lost in the shuffle.
“@ Thill
You said,
But it make no sense to say that I may not be aware of my own REASONS for the action or decision.
I may have miss used your uses of the word “Reason”. If “my own reason” means “what I tell others my purpose, intention or motivation for change is” then sure, we may be aware of what we said, but what we said is often highly blind — as I said above. Perhaps we agree on that.”
I don’t know what you mean by “what we said is often highly blind”.
It is important not to conflate two different issues in this context:
1. Can an agent be unaware of her own reasons for believing or doing X?
2. Can an agent’s reasons for believing or doing X turn out to be bad reasons?
The obvious answer to the first question is “No” and the obvious to the second question is “Yes”.
1. Can an agent be unaware of her own reasons for believing or doing X?
People are often unaware of their own reasons. While Freud was wrong about a million things, the idea of the “subconscious” is still a useful one.
Think of a person who engages in self-destructive activity, which can be as simple as not doing their homework, not exercising, etc. Ask them why they did that, and the answer could very well be “I don’t know”. That is not (necessarily) a lie.
When our behavior is driven by things other than explicit logical reasons (e.g. by habits or statistical expectations), we generally have no conscious access to those statistical priors.
You can make this happen experimentally: in brief, if you subtly teach someone a pattern, you can reach a point where their behavior changes (they can reproduce the pattern) but they are unaware of it (they claim that there is no pattern and they are still “guessing”).
@ Amod Lele:
So, for Libresco’s conversion, you feel:
Could you give me you a list of 3-4 and weight them (0-100% influence). I know it will be false numbers and totally speculative but it will be a way to see concretely what you think the causes are.
You said,
and people are often though not always aware of the most important factors.
I highly doubt that. Do you have empirical evidence for that? (not that you should), but that seems a huge assumption. I wonder if it has been tested. I imagine there are tons of studies showing huge blindness.
My experience is that people’s temperaments and social settings are huge causes and they are often unaware of them in as causative agents.
You said:
Taking someone’s word for something is a useful tactic but often blind and a waste of time. For instance, in medicine, my patients often tell me why they think they have their symptoms. They are usually grossly wrong and I do them a disfavor by being blinded by their own evaluations. Their eval may be useful but there is not reason to assume it is accurate at all.
Well, I hope that point delineates our differences.
[sorry, ignoring comment levels because they destroy chronicity]
I can imagine that Libresco might be aware of a specific moment when the force of a certain argument made itself felt and I can also imagine that the factors that led up to her being the sort of person for whom that argument had force being opaque to her. A moment of insight is often preceded by a long process of stuckness when nothing seems clear. There is the contrast also between the psychological force that an argument has and its ontological grounding. I might hold a different view as to the ontological aspects of an insight but what I cannot doubt is that she had that insight at a particular moment in time. I think the fallacy that we don’t know anything because we don’t know everything can obscure this point.
We are speaking about conversion as if it were an end in itself rather than a beginning. To the extent conversion is the result of a process, that seems to be a correct approach as far as it goes. But particularly for religions or philosophies that have a quality of path, a conversion could simply be a judgment that the path is a good path — that it either is better than no path or better than another path.
Life is short. It is not possible to engage in many different paths and approaches. If the choice is between dabbling in many approaches and following in depth one of several that offer insights and support, conversion could simply be an expedient approach based on a choice to commit to one approach. It can also be a commitment (like marriage) where there is confidence in the direction and the worth of the journey — but no guarantees and where the end cannot be seen from the starting point.
Jim Wilton:
You are correct in stating that this is only the beginning. My personal feeling is that at this time she should be lying low and consolidating her new condition and not dissipate it with wrangling. As a neonate she is more delicate than she takes herself to be. St. Augustine spent some years with his friends in a life of poverty after his conversion and St.Paul disappeared for 2 years. These examples could be multiplied, I am sure, in all the great traditions. One thinks of Milarepa’s tower.
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