Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical

Is It Sometimes Rational to Believe on Insufficient Evidence?

I should think so.

The notion that we should always and everywhere apportion belief to evidence in such a way that we affirm only that for which we have sufficient evidence ignores the fact that belief for beings like us subserves action. If one acted only on those beliefs for which one had sufficient evidence one  would not act as one must to live well.

 

When a young person believes that he or she can do such-and-such, it is almost always on the basis of insufficient evidence.  And yet such belief beyond the evidence is a sine qua non of success.  There are two necessary conditions of success in life: one must believe that what one proposes to do is worth doing, and one must believe that one is capable of doing it.  In both cases one believes and acts on evidence that could hardly be called sufficient. 

As a young man observing my professors, I said to myself, "I can do this and I can do it better!"  (It can be advantageous to have mediocre teachers!) My belief in myself was not without evidence but surely was not grounded in sufficient evidence. (Suppose we agree that sufficient evidence for proposition p renders p more likely than not.)  My believing in myself was a believing well beyond the evidence. But my belief in self, even unto cockiness, was sine qua non for my success.  Effort follows belief.  In cases like these, belief is a matter of the will: one chooses to believe that a certain good is attainable despite the insufficiency of the evidence the intellect can gather at the time.

This strikes me as a good maxim:  Don't let insufficient evidence prevent you from believing what you are better off believing than not believing. 

Let's consider another example.

The New Neighbors

What evidence do I have that my new neighbors are morally decent people? Since they have just moved in, my evidence base is exiguous indeed and far from sufficient to establish that they are decent people. (Assume that some precisifying definition of 'decent' is on the table.) Should I suspend judgment and behave in a cold, skeptical, stand-offish way toward them? ("Prove that you are not a scumbag, and then I'll talk to you.") Should I demand of them 'credentials' and letters of recommendation before having anything to do with them? Either of these approaches would be irrational.

A rational being wants good relations with those with whom he must live in close proximity and whose help he may need. Wanting good relations, he must choose means that are conducive to that end. Knowing something about human nature, he knows that 'giving the benefit of the doubt' is the wise course when it comes to establishing relations with other people. If you begin by impugning the integrity of the other guy, he won't like you.  One must assume the best about others at the outset and adjust downwards only later and on the basis of evidence to the contrary. But note that my initial belief that my neighbors are decent people -- a belief that I must have if I am to act neighborly toward them -- is not warranted by anything that could be called sufficient evidence. Holding that belief, I believe way beyond the evidence. And yet that is the rational course.

So again we see that in some cases, to refuse to believe beyond the evidence is positively irrational. A theory of rationality adequate for the kind of beings we are cannot require that belief be always and everywhere apportioned to evidence.

A Crisp Argument for Propositions

1) With respect to any occurrent (as opposed to dispositional) belief, there is a distinction between the mental act of believing and the content believed. Since believing is 'intentional' as philosophers use this term, i.e., necessarily object-directed, there cannot be an act of believing that is not directed upon some object or content. To believe is to believe something, that the door has been left ajar, for example. Nevertheless, the believing and the believed are distinct.

2) The contents of believings have properties that belief-states lack. For one thing, belief-contents are shareable. That the door has been left ajar, that Frege died in 1925, that both 2 and -2 are roots of 4, are contents to which more than one mind has access. But the psychological state that I am in when I believe that the door is ajar is not shareable in the same sense. Second, the belief-contents can be accepted, rejected, entertained, etc., which is not the case for the corresponding believings, disbelievings, and entertainings unless of course these believings, etc.  become the objects of higher order beliefs. Third, belief contents are either true or false, which cannot be said in exactly same sense of believings, etc.

3) There are occurrent beliefs.

Therefore

4) There are propositions.

The argument is to the conclusion that something or other must play the roles of truth-bearer, object of such attitudes as knowing and believing, and ground of the possibility of two or more minds' coming to believe or know the same thing. It is an argument for the existence of propositions that leaves open their exact nature. 

A Peace Worth Wanting? Problems with Pyrrhonian Ataraxia: Passivity and Porcinity

The Pyrrhonians see clearly that part of our misery in this life is due to our inability to attain certain knowledge. Wanting certainty, but unable to secure it, we are thrown back upon conflicting beliefs that inflame passions. The heat of the passions seems to vary inversely with the rational unprovability of the beliefs that stoke them. The Pyrrhonians try to find happiness in the midst of this misery. We are to suspend judgment (belief) and thereby attain peace of mind.  Theirs is not a theoretical but a therapeutic conception of philosophy. The Skeptic therapy diagnoses our illness as belief and prescribes the purgation of belief as the cure. Martha C. Nussbaum (The Therapy of Desire, Princeton UP, 1994, 284-285) puts it well:

In short, says the Skeptic, Epicurus is correct that the central human disease is a disease of belief. But he is wrong to feel that the solution lies in doing away with some beliefs and clinging all the more firmly to others. The disease is not one of false belief; belief itself is the illness -- belief as a commitment, a source of concern, care, and vulnerability.

. . . Greek Skepticism, attaching itself to the medical analogy, commends this diagnosis and proposes a radical cure: the purgation of all cognitive commitment, all belief, from human life.The Skeptic, "being a lover of his fellow human beings, wishes to heal by argument, insofar as he can, the conceit and the rashness of dogmatic people" (PH 3.280).

We note the radicality of both the diagnosis and the cure.  Since belief as such makes us ill, the cure must lie in the purgation of all beliefs including, I assume, any beliefs instrumental in effecting the cure. Just as a good laxative flushes itself out along with everything else, doxastic purgation supposedly relieves us of all doxastic impactation, including the beliefs underpinning the therapeutic procedures. You might say that the aperient effect of epoche is to restore us to mundane regularity.

I reject the Skeptic Way, its destination, and its 'laxatives.' I agree that we are ill, all of us, and that that part of our misery in this life is due to our inability to attain what we desire and feel is our birthright, namely, certain knowledge, in particular, certain knowledge of ultimates. But I reject both the diagnosis and the cure.  The problem is not belief as such, and the solution is not purgation of belief.

Pyrrhonism is rife with problems. Here is one about the value of ataraxia.  It is a value, but how high a value?

The Passivity of Ataraxia

The notion that ataraxia  (mental tranquillity, peace of soul, freedom from disturbance) is either essential to happiness or the whole of happiness is a paltry and passive conception of happiness. The peace of the Pyrrhonian is not the "peace that surpasses all understanding" (Phillipians 4:7), but a peace predicated upon not understanding -- and not caring any more about understanding. Could that be a peace worth wanting?

The Skeptic who, true to his name, begins with inquiry abandons inquiry when he finds that nothing can be known with certainty. But rather than have recourse to uncertain belief, the Skeptic concludes that the problem is belief itself. Rather than go forward on uncertain beliefs, he essays to go forward belieflessly. Inquiry, he maintains, issues in the psychological state of aporia (being at a loss) when it is seen that competing beliefs cancel each other out.  The resulting evidential equipoise issues in epoche (withdrawal of assent) and then supposedly in ataraxia.  

Now  mental tranquillity is a high value, and no one who takes philosophy seriously can not want to possess more of it. But the Skeptic's brand of tranquillity cannot be the highest value, and perhaps not much of a value at all. The happy life cannot be anything so passive as the life of ataraxia. We need a more virile conception of happiness, and we find it in Aristotle. For the Stagirite, happiness (eudaimonia) is an activity (ergon) of the soul (psyche) in accordance with virtue (arete) over an entire life. (Cf. Nicomachean Ethics.) His is an active conception of the good life even though the highest virtues are the intellectual and contemplative virtues. The highest life is the bios theoretikos, the vita contemplativa. Though contemplative, it necessarily involves the activity of inquiry into the truth, an activity that skepticism, whether Pyrrhonian or Academic, denigrates.

The Porcinity of Ataraxia

Disillusioned with the search for truth, our Skeptic advocates re-entry into the everyday. Unfortunately, there is something not only passive, but also porcine about the Skeptic's resting in ataraxia. Nussbaum again:

Animal examples play an important part in Skepticism, illustrating the natural creature's freedom from disturbance,and the ease with which this is attained if we only can, in Pyrrho's words, "altogether divest ourselves of the human being" (DL 9.66). The instinctive behavior of a pig, calmly removing its hunger during a storm that fills humans with anxiety, exemplifies for the Skeptic the natural orientation we all have to free ourselves from immediate pain. It also shows that this is easily done, if we divest ourselves of the beliefs and commitments that generate other complex pains and anxieties. Pointing to that pig, Pyrrho said "that the wise man should live in just such and undisturbed condition" (DL 9.66).

How is that for a porcine view of the summum bonum?  I am put in mind of this well-known passage from John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, Chapter II:

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied  than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question.  The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

Is the Skeptic Committed to Ataraxia's being a Value? 

The Skeptic aspires to live belieflessly, adoxastos.  He aims to live beyond all commitments, or at least beyond all commitments that transcend present impressions. (It is a nice question, one best left for later, whether our Skeptic can, consistently with his entire approach, cop to a commitment to something as Chisholmianly noncommital as his here and now being-appeared-to-sweetly when, for example, he eats honey. Does he not here and and now accept, affirm, believe that he is being-appeared-to-sweetly when he consumes honey? Sticking to impressions, he does not accept, affirm, believe that the honey IS sweet, but 'surely' he must accept, affirm, believe that he IS (in reality) presently being appeared-to-sweetly. No?)

Setting aside for now our parenthetical worry, what about the commitment to the pursuit of ataraxia? He who treads the Skeptic Path is committed to the value of ataraxia, and this value-commitment obviously transcends his present impressions.  It is the organizing principle behind his therapeutic procedures and his entire way of life. It is what his quasi-medicinal treatments are for.  Ataraxia is the goal, the 'final cause' of the therapy.  So here we have yet another doxastic-axiological commitment that is part and parcel of the Skeptic Way.  We see once a again that a life without commitment is impossible.

Nussbaum considers how a Skeptic might respond:

I think he would now answer that yes, after all, an orientation to ataraxia is very fundamental in his procedures. But the orientation to ataraxia is not a belief, or a value-commitment. It has the status of a natural inclination. Naturally, without belief or teaching, we move to free ourselves from burdens and disturbances. Ataraxia does not need to become a dogmatic commitment, because it is already a natural animal impulse . . . Just as the dog moves to take a thorn out of its paw, so we naturally move to get rid of our pains and impediments: not intensely or with any committed attachment but because that's just the way we go. (305)

This quotation is right before the pig passage quoted above. Nussbaum does not endorse the response she puts in the mouth of the Skeptic, and she very skillfully presents the difficulty.  The Skeptic, whether he aims to be consistent or not, must adopt a Skeptical attitude toward ataraxia "if he is to avoid disturbance and attain ataraxia." (Nussbaum, 301)  He cannot be committed to ataraxia or any of the procedures that supposedly lead to it without running the risk of disturbance.

I would add that our Skeptic cannot even be committed to the possibility of ataraxia. The pursuit of ataraxia enjoins a suspension of judgment as to its possibility or impossibility. For any claim that humans are capable of ataraxia is a claim that goes beyond the impressions of the present moment, a claim that can give rise to dispute and disturbance.  But it is even worse that this. It occurs to me that our Skeptic cannot even grant that he or anyone has ever experienced ataraxia in the past since this claim too would go beyond the impressions of the present moment.

Suppose you went to this doctor for treatment.  You ask him how successful his procedures are. "How many, doc, have experienced relief after a course of your purgatives and aperients?" The good doctor will not commit himself.  He has no 'track record' he will stand by. No point, then, is asking about the prognosis.

How then can the Skeptic save himself from incoherence? It seems he must reduce the human being to an animal that simply follows its natural instincts and inclinations. Divesting himself of his humanity, he must sink to the level of the animal as Pyrrho recommends. Indeed, he must stop acting and merely respond to stimuli. Human action has beliefs as inputs, and human action is for reasons.  But all of this is out if we are to avoid all doxastic and axiological commitments.

We now clearly see that the Skeptic Way is a dead end. We want the human good, happiness. But we are given a load of rhetoric that implies that there is no specifically human good and that we must regress to the level of animals.

But even this recommendation bristles with paradox. For it too is a commitment to a course of action that transcends the moment when action is impossible for a critter that merely responds instinctually to environmental stimuli.

To Emil Cioran I would say: safety is overrated.

Unusual Experiences and the Problems of Overbelief and Underbelief

One day, well over 35 years ago, I was deeply tormented by a swarm of negative thoughts and feelings that had arisen because of a dispute with a certain person.  Pacing around my apartment, I suddenly, without any forethought, raised my hands toward the ceiling and said, "Release me!"  It was a wholly spontaneous cri du coeur, a prayer if you will, but not intended as such.  I emphasize that it was wholly unpremeditated.    As soon as I had said the words and made the gesture, a wonderful peace descended upon my mind and the flood of negativity vanished. I became as calm as a Stoic sage.

That is an example of what I am calling an unusual experience.  Only some of us have such experiences, and those who do, only rarely.  I never had just such an experience before or since. The experience could be described with appropriate philosophical caution as an experience AS OF the immediate answering of a prayer petition.  I have had, however, a wide variety of other types of unusual experiences of a religious, mystical and paranormal nature.

A second very memorable experience occurred while in deep formal meditation.  I had the strong sense that I was the object of a very powerful love.  I suddenly had the feeling that I was being loved by someone.  Unfortunately, my analytic mind went to work on the experience and it soon subsided. This is why, when the gifts of meditation arrive, one must surrender to them in utter passivity, something that intellectual types will find it very hard to do. 

The typical intellectual suffers from hypertrophy of the critical faculty, and in consequence, he suffers the blockage of the channels of intuition.  He hones his intellect on the whetstone of discursivity, and if he is not careful, he may hone it away to nothing, or else perfect the power of slicing while losing the power of splicing.

Now suppose one were to interpret an experience such as the first one described  as a reception of divine grace or as the answering of a prayer by a divine or angelic agent.  Such an interpretation would involve what William James calls overbelief.  Although the genial James uses the term several times in Varieties of Religious Experience and elsewhere, I don't believe he ever defines the term.  But I think it is is keeping with his use of the term to say that an  overbelief is a belief arrived at by reading out of an experience more than is contained within it.

Similarly, if I came to believe that what I experienced in the second experience was the love of Christ (subjective genitive), that would be an overbelief.  The experience could not be doubted while I was having it, and now, a few years after having the experience, I have no practical doubts about it either:  I have the testimony of my journal account which was written right after the experience, testimony that is corroborated by my present memories. 

Unfortunately, experiences do not bear within themselves certificates of veridicality.  There are two questions that an experience qua experience leaves open.  First, is it of something real?  Second, even if it is of something real, is it of the particular thing the overbelief says it is of? 

Suppose a skeptic pipes up: "What you experienced was not the love of Christ, you gullible fool, but a random electro-chemical discharge in your brain."  But of course, that would be wrong, indeed absurd.  The experience was certainly not of that.  The experience had a definite and describable phenomenological content, a content not describable in electro-chemical or neural terms.

Indeed, it is arguable that the skeptic is trading in underbelief, a word I just now coined.  [Correction, 11 July 2013: James uses 'under-belief' on p. 515 of The Varieties of Religious Experience.] If an  overbelief is a belief arrived at by reading out of an experience more than is contained within it, then an underbelief is a belief arrived at by reading out of an experience less than is contained within it, or reading into it what manifestly is not contained within it. 

Pounding on such a boneheaded skeptic, however, does not get the length of a proof of the veridicality of my experience. 

We are on the point of becoming entangled in a thicket of thorny questions.  Are there perceptual beliefs?  If yes, are they not overbeliefs?  I see a bobcat sitting outside my study and I form the belief that there is a bobcat five feet from me.  But surely that existential claim goes beyond what the experience vouchsafes.  The existence of the cat cannot be read off from the experience . . . .

Or is it rather underbelief  if I refuse to grant that seeing a bobcat in normal conditions (good light, etc.) is proof that it exists in reality beyond my visual perception?

Should we perhaps define 'overbelief' and 'underbelief' in such a way that they pertain only to non-empirical matters?

Furthermore, is an overbelief a belief?  Might 'over' function here as an alienans adjective?  Beliefs are either true or false.  Perhaps overbeliefs are neither, being merely matters of attitude, merely subjective additions to experiences.  I think James would reject this.  For him, overbeliefs are genuine beliefs.  I'll dig up some passages later.

Sam Harris, you may remember, holds that the nonexistence of the self is something that one can learn from meditation.  But he too, I should think, is involved in overbelief.  One cannot observe the nonexistence of the self.  Harris' belief goes well beyond anything that meditation discloses.  The self does not turn up among the objects of experience as a separate object.  Granted.  It doesn't follow, however, that there is no self.  To get to that conclusion overbelief is necessary, along the lines of: Only that which can be singled out as an object of experience exists or is real.  How justify that on the basis of a close inspection of experience?  It is sometimes called the Principle of Acquaintance.  Are we acquainted with it?

The irony shouldn't be missed.  Harris, the febrile religion-basher, embraces a religious overbelief in his Buddhist rejection of the self.  Buddhism is a religion.