Faith, Hope, and Justification Liz Jackson, Ryerson University (lizjackson111@gmail.com) For Propositional and Doxastic Justification (Routledge) Luis R.G. Oliveira and Paul Silva, eds. Abstract: The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is normally applied to belief. The goal of this paper is to apply the distinction to faith and hope. Before doing so, I discuss the nature of faith and hope, and how they contrast with belief-belief has no essential conative component, whereas faith and hope essentially involve the conative. I discuss implications this has for evaluating faith and hope, and apply this to the propositional/doxastic distinction. There are two key upshots. One, bringing in faith and hope makes salient additional normative categories, including the way the distinction between epistemic and practical justification interacts with the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. Two, a paradigm example of propositional without doxastic justification is a belief that is evidentially supported but based on wishful thinking. Surprisingly, parallel cases of faith and hope may actually enjoy both propositional and doxastic justification. I conclude by exploring what it might look like for faith and hope to have propositional justification without doxastic justification. Keywords: Belief; Faith; Hope; Epistemic Justification; Practical Justification; Propositional Justification; Doxastic Justification 1. Introduction Justification comes in many stripes. There's epistemic, practical, and all-things-considered justification. Justification can apply to mental states-e.g. belief, desire, intention-and to acts- e.g. bodily movements, mental acts, omissions. And even narrowing in on the epistemic justification of belief specifically, philosophers make further distinctions. A common one is between propositional justification-justification to believe p-and doxastic justification-having a justified belief that p.1 Doxastic justification is stronger than propositional justification. Consider two examples of the latter without the former. The first is when one has good reasons to believe p, but for whatever reason, simply doesn't believe p. Suppose I have a justified belief that my paper is due on the 15th, and have a justified belief that today is the 15th, but nevertheless fail to believe that my paper is due today. In this case, I have propositional, but not doxastic, justification to believe that my paper is due today. The second example of propositional without doxastic justification is when I have good reasons to believe p, but ignore those reasons and instead believe p on a poor basis. Suppose I see that my phone's reliable weather app predicts rain tomorrow. But I distrust the app because I think its creators are a part of a conspiracy. Instead, I grab my magic 8 ball and ask if it will rain tomorrow, and the ball answers "yes," so I believe it will. In this case, I have great reasons to believe it will rain tomorrow, but my belief isn't based on those reasons. Again, I have propositional, but not doxastic, justification to believe that it will rain tomorrow. While most of the literature on this distinction focuses on the justification of belief, beliefs aren't the only attitudes that can enjoy justification. This paper focuses on two other mental states: faith and hope. We'll assume that faith and hope-like belief-are sometimes justified and sometimes unjustified. My faith that my brother will show up to my birthday party may be justified, but my faith that my magic 8 ball is reliable isn't justified. My hope that my paper will eventually be 1 The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification was originally introduced by Firth (1978); see Silva & Oliveira (forthcoming) for an introduction to the distinction. 2 published may be justified, but my hope that our 2-hours-late uber driver will show up isn't justified. The primary goal of this paper is to explore how the propositional and doxastic justification distinction applies to faith and hope. First, in Section 2, we'll explore the nature of faith and hope-getting clear on descriptive questions about faith and hope is essential for answering questions about their justification. In Section 3, we'll explore general normative questions about faith and hope. Finally, in Section 4, we'll apply the propositional and doxastic justification distinction to faith and hope. Throughout this paper, we'll use belief as a contrast class-there's been a lot of ink spilled over the justification of belief, so it's instructive to start there. There are a few main upshots of our discussion. Bringing in faith and hope makes salient additional normative categories, including the way the distinction between epistemic and practical justification interacts with the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. We will see that-at least potentially-this provides four ways we can evaluate belief, faith, and hope (and other mental states as well). We'll also see that, while wishful thinking causes a lack of at least doxastic justification in the belief case, wishful faith and wishful hope don't as obviously lack doxastic justification. Finally, we'll consider what it might look like for faith and hope to have propositional justification without doxastic justification. 2. The Nature of Faith and Hope There are many kinds of faith, and many kinds of hope. Here, we'll focus on faith and hope as mental states, as opposed to faith and hope as actions. A lost hiker might take an act of faith by attempting to jump a wide crevice, if it's the only way back to civilization (see James 1897). Similarly, some in the hope literature focus on an action-oriented strand of hope, often called hopefulness (Martin 2013: 69; Bloser and Stahl 2017-a: 367). There are important questions about what justifies faith and hope qua acts, but here we'll restrict our focus to attitudes. Second, we'll focus on propositional versions of faith and hope-as opposed to faith or hope in a person or in an ideal. This again sharpens our focus, and brings the strand of faith and hope of interest in line with belief-which is a propositional attitude. Finally, this paper is about both religious and secular versions of faith and hope. Faith and hope are two of the three theological virtues (alongside love; see 1 Cor. 13:13), but at the same time, they are an important part of our everyday lives and personal relationships (see. e.g. Saran 2014, Preston-Roedder 2018). My remarks in this paper should apply to both strands. This is a borderline truism: evaluating the rationality of an attitude requires some understanding of the nature of that attitude. For this reason, we'll begin with descriptive questions in this section, then move to normative questions. 2.1 Belief, faith, and hope Philosophers often distinguish between two kinds of mental states. Cognitive or epistemic states have a mind-to-world direction of fit. They represent the world. They are normally truth-tracking, responsive to evidence, and evaluable from primarily an epistemic point of view. Examples of cognitive mental states include beliefs, credences, and probability-beliefs. 3 Conative mental states, by contrast, have a world-to-mind direction of fit. They reflect what an agent takes to be desirable or valuable, and are inherently motivating. They needn't involve evidence or epistemic justification for their contents (I can desire that p, even knowing p is false-e.g. I desire this pandemic never occurred, but I know it did). Examples of conative mental states include desires, pro-attitudes, and beliefs about the good. With this distinction in mind, let's move to examining the nature of belief, faith, and hope.2 Belief is the attitude of taking something to be the case or regarding it as true (Schwitzgebel 2019). Belief generally requires quite a bit epistemically (e.g. fairly strong evidence). We ought not, and often will not, believe p if our evidence strongly favors not-p. In this, belief is primarily sensitive to epistemic factors, like evidence and truth.3 On the other hand, belief that p doesn't have implications for desiring p. I might believe that I failed a test or I missed a flight, even though I have no desire for either of those to be true. Thus, belief has a strong epistemic component but no essential conative component. What's the relationship between faith and belief? Almost all philosophers think that belief doesn't entail faith. Consider my beliefs that I failed a test or missed a flight-I don't have faith that either of these are true. A common explanation for this is that faith that p, but not belief that p, involves a positive conative attitude toward p-e.g. a desire for p, a positive evaluation of p, etc. Many also deny that faith entails belief-although this is more controversial.4 There are a number of reasons for this, but here is one: faith seems to "go beyond the evidence" in a way that belief doesn't. Similarly, faith is compatible with more doubt that belief. Even if belief is compatible with some doubt-as it seems fine to say, "I believe p but there's a chance I'm wrong"-it seems like faith is compatible with even more doubt-more counterevidence or lower credences. Both of these observations seem difficult to explain if faith is just, or entails, a kind of believing. So, if you buy the story about faith from the previous paragraph-which I'll assume is basically correct-this means that faith has (i) a cognitive component (but a moderate one, weaker than belief's) and (ii) a moderate or even strong conative component. On this view, faith is compatible with believing, but it goes beyond the evidence more than belief. So, if I have very good evidence that God exists, I might both believe and have faith that God exists. But if I lose some of this evidence, I might give up my belief, but nonetheless maintain my faith that God exists. In this case, the epistemic component of faith isn't belief, but might be replaced by, e.g. a moderately high credence God exists, or a belief that God's existence is probable. Nonetheless, it also doesn't seem like faith is compatible with any amount of doubt. If I get so much counterevidence that my credence in p is say, 0.1, I should give up my faith-and most would do so. Faith also involves (ii): a desire for, or a pro-attitude towards, its content. So I could also lose my faith that God exists if lose my desire for God to exist, or begin to think that God's existing would be a bad thing. Faith may include more than the cognitive and the conative states described above. It might also involve the affective, so having faith involves, or has implications for, one's emotions (HowardSnyder 2013; Rettler 2018). Some also maintain that a separate aspect of faith is the fact that it goes beyond the evidence (Howard-Snyder 2013; Buchak 2012). However, I suspect this could be captured in other features of faith (the fact that it is partially grounded in a pro-attitude, and/or 2 For more on the relationship between these three states, see Jackson (forthcoming). 3 I say "primarily" because on some views, practical and moral factors can affect the epistemic justification of a belief (e.g. Fantl & McGrath 2009; Basu & Schroeder 2019). I set these encroachment views aside, but see Basu's paper in this volume for more on encroachment and justification. 4 Pojman (1986), Audi (1991), Alston (1996), Howard-Snyder (2013) and McKaughan (2013), among others, argue that faith doesn't entail belief. Mugg (2016) and Malcolm and Scott (2016) argue that faith entails belief. 4 that it doesn't require belief). Here, I'll mainly focus on the cognitive and conative components of faith, but my arguments should be largely consistent with views that include other components as well. Hope is similar to, but importantly distinct from, faith. On the standard view, hope that p consists of two things: a desire for p to be true and a belief that p is possible (Downie 1963: 248; Day 1969: 89; see Milona 2019 for a recent defense of the standard view). Note that, on this view, the cognitive component of hope-which can be understood as either a belief that p possible or as a non-zero credence in p-is in some sense even weaker than that of faith. In the case of faith, if one has a very low credence in p, one shouldn't-and most wouldn't-continue to have faith. But hope is uncontroversially consistent with very low credences-as long as they are non-zero. Note that hope is consistent with high credences as well, but not maximally high-it seems odd to hope for things in which we are certain. Then, as Martin (2013: 69) notes, hope that p may be consistent with any credence in p between, but excluding, 1 and 0. Even so, hope's cognitive component is weaker than that of faith. But, like faith, hope has a strong conative component. Hoping for p requires a desire for p to be true. As Born (2018: 107) notes, 'Hope is essentially a desire, a pro-attitude...' Almost everyone in the hope literature maintains that a desire for the proposition in question is necessary for hope. Whether the conative component of hope is stronger than the conative component of faith is controversial. In Jackson (forthcoming), I give two reasons to think hope's conative component is stronger than faith's. One, if hope has the same conative component as faith and a weaker epistemic one, hope starts to look like faith's "younger sibling". However, hope seems to have its own power and distinctiveness, apart from faith. It is often considered a virtue in its own right, and something that is important for people to cultivate. Hope's having a stronger conative component than faith can explain its distinctness. Two, there's a puzzle in the hope literature about how hope has such strong motivating power in difficult circumstances, when all it requires is a non-zero credence in p (see Pettit 2004: 154; McGeer 2004: 104; Martin 2013; Calhoun 2018-a). One way to help solve this puzzle is to maintain that hope has an especially strong conative component. Because the outcome would be so good, this motives agents with hope in a unique way. Some respond to this puzzle-and a related puzzle that involves distinguishing hope from despair-by maintaining that hope has additional components, beyond simply a desire and a possibility-belief (or non-zero credence). For example, Meirav (2009) argues that hope involves "an external factor"-an attitude towards some factor (e.g., nature, fate, God) on which the realization of the hoped-for end causally depends. Calhoun (2018-a) argues that hope provides the hopeful a "phenomenological idea of the future". On Martin (2013)'s "incorporation" account of hope, the hopeful's cognitive attitudes provide a "justificatory rationale" for related emotions and actions. Finally, Chignell (2021)'s "focus theory" of hope entails that hoping involves a special attention to the hoped-for outcome. Even most of those that supplement "the standard view" of hope nonetheless think that a desire and a non-zero credence/possibility-belief are necessary for hope-they just maintain that they aren't jointly sufficient. Again, like the case of faith, I'll mainly focus on the cognitive and conative components of hope picked out by the standard view, but my arguments should be largely consistent with views that include other components as well. In sum: belief is a cognitive attitude with a mind-to-world direction of fit, that is primarily sensitive to epistemic factors, like evidence. Faith and hope, by contrast, involve both cognitive and conative components, so they consistent of states that have a mind-to-world direction of fit, and other states that have a world-to-mind direction of fit. The cognitive and conative components of faith 5 and hope nonetheless differ slightly-for example, most think that hope is consistent with lower credences than faith, but hope may have a stronger conative component than faith. 2.2 Mental Fundamentality Some states are mentally fundamental, in the sense that they don't reduce to other states. For example, one debate involves whether beliefs reduce to credences or credences reduce to beliefs, or whether belief and credence are both fundamental attitudes (see Jackson 2020-a). Others have argued that knowledge is fundamental (Williamson 2000), that seemings are fundamental (McAlister 2018), or that desires are fundamental (Lewis 1988; 1996). On many of these views, we should understand other mental states in terms of the fundamental states. David Lewis, for example, thought that pretty much all mental states could be traced back to a belief-like state or a desire-like state. Some go even further and reduce desires to beliefs about the good (Price 1989; Gregory forthcoming). Still others reduce beliefs to high credences (Eriksson and Hajek 2007; Lee and Silva forthcoming). Reducing everything to a small number of attitude-types is challenging, however, because there are many candidate sui generis mental states-including imaginings, intentions, and emotions (although some reduce intentions to beliefs and emotions to beliefs; see Marušić and Schwenkler 2018 for the former and Roberts 1998 for the latter).5 The point here isn't to settle debates about exactly which mental states are fundamental; I discuss this to shed light on the nature of faith and hope. In my view, faith and hope are not good candidates for fundamental mental states. Why? Well, consider our discussion above. Both faith and hope have cognitive components and conative components, which have opposite directions of fit. If faith and hope are sui generis, then, for one thing, it's not clear what direction of fit they'd have. Breaking them into smaller components is natural and intuitive, is characteristic of almost all existing philosophical analyses offered thus far, and gives us clear answer to questions about direction of fit. Consider faith. The role of the cognitive component of faith can be played by different mental states-including beliefs, credences, probability-beliefs, beliefs in epistemic modals (and this component has a mind-to-world direction of fit). Same with the role of the conative component- it could be played be a desire, a pro-attitude, or a belief about the good (and this component has a world-to-mind direction of fit). Faith may have an affective or emotive component as well. It's thus natural to see faith as a mental state that is "built up" of these more fundamental mental-state parts. Same for hope-many of our hopes may be built up of (at least) a probability-belief or nonzero credence (the cognitive component) and a desire or pro-attitude (the conative component). Because this picture of faith and hope is both natural and orthodox (for faith, see Howard-Synder 2013; for hope, see Blöesr & Stahl 2017-b), I'm pretty sanguine about a project that reduces faith and hope to various combinations of more-fundamental attitudes. Given that we've seemed to successfully understood them by breaking them into various components, combined with the theoretical pressure there is to not multiply fundamental entities beyond necessity, I think we have good reason to go in for a reductionist project. 5 And to clarify, if a certain mental state(s) is fundamental, this isn't to say that mind-body dualism is true. There's a separate question of whether we can give a satisfactory physicalist account of mental states. These debates about mental fundamentality don't presuppose anything about the dualism/physicalism debate; fundamentality just means that certain states reduce to, or supervene on, other states. The states that are mentally fundamental may nonetheless then reduce to, or supervene on, physical states. 6 Before we move to normative questions, note that the idea that faith and hope are nonfundamental states doesn't mean they are invaluable, unimportant, or not worth studying. In fact, as I argue in Jackson (forthcoming), states that have both a conative and a cognitive component have a unique power: in motivation and in rationalizing action. Further, we'll see in the next sections why evaluating and understanding faith and hope may require more than simply analyzing each of their parts. 3. Normative Questions We now turn to normative questions about faith and hope. We'll focus on faith and hope's "justification" or "rationality"-I'm using those terms interchangeably. So, what makes faith and hope justified? Deriving general principles about faith and hope's justification seems difficult at first blush. One, faith and hope are plausibly non-fundamental mental states, and two, faith and hope include components with opposite directions of fit. This means that accurately representing the world isn't enough to be justified full-stop, and being fitting or conductive to one's flourishing isn't enough to be justified full-stop. One might think that a token of faith or hope is justified when it is both sufficiently accurate/evidentially supported (fill in your favorite story about rational cognitive attitudes) and sufficiently fitting/conductive to one's flourishing (fill in your favorite story about rational conative attitudes). However, this might not even be enough. Suppose mental state M has parts A, B, and C. Simply because A, B, and C are justified doesn't mean M as a whole is justified-M's justification may depend on how A–C interact. For example, maybe each component is individually justified, but they fail to cohere with each other.6 So giving a story about the justification of faith and hope seems difficult. However, "justification" is ambiguous between practical and epistemic justification; this may help with our problem. Before applying this to faith and hope, note that whether we can evaluate beliefs for their practical justification is controversial. Several-e.g. Kelly (2002), Shah (2003; 2006), Way (2012)-argue that evaluating beliefs for practical justification raises wrong-kind-of-reason concerns. On this view, practical reasons don't apply directly to beliefs at all. Others-e.g. Leary (2017) and Rinard (2018; 2019)-argue that there are practical reasons for and against belief. Interestingly, faith and hope are completely different-no one, to my knowledge, has argued that practical evaluations of faith and hope are subject to a wrong-kind-of-reason concern. What's more, many prominent normative accounts of faith and hope focus primarily on practical rationality (see Rioux forthcoming: sec. 2).7 This makes sense, given the nature of belief, faith, and hope outlined in the previous section. Since belief is primarily an epistemic or cognitive state, it's natural to think there'd be controversy as to whether it can be practically evaluated. Faith and hope, by contrast, involve both the cognitive and the conative, which makes them natural candidates to be evaluated not just epistemically but also practically-they don't only aim at representing the world, but also involve goodness and value, including what is good for the agent. 6 Relevant here is the literature on organic unities and emergent properties. See Moore (1903: 27); O'Connor & Wong (2015). 7 For hope, see Bovens (1999: sec. 3); Pettit (2004: 160); Martin (2013: 48–52); Calhoun (2018-b: 86–88). For faith, see Buchak (2012); McKaughan (2013). But others do focus explicitly on epistemic rationality; see Benton (2019; forthcoming) for an explicit discussion of hope's epistemic rationality, and specifically it's incompatibility with knowledge, and Jackson (2019; 2020-b) for a discussion of faith's epistemic rationality. 7 Thus, it's natural to think that, for each token state of faith or hope that p, there's four possibilities. It could be: both practically and epistemically unjustified, practically rational but not epistemically justified, epistemically justified but not practically justified, and both practically and epistemically justified. To see how practical and epistemic justification may come apart here, consider some examples. Let's begin with hope. Milona and Stockdale (2018: 209) discuss a case of hoping to get back together with one's abusive ex-partner. This hope might be perfectly epistemically justified: given your evidence of your partner's past behavior, it is rational to consider this a live possibility or sufficiently probable. Nonetheless, it is practically unjustified: even if you do in some sense desire it, you ought not to desire it; it's obtaining would be quite bad for you. Hopes can also be practically justified, but epistemically unjustified. Consider a teenager who hopes his divorced parents will get back together. This hope may be practically justified if it sustains him or keeps him going, but it also might be epistemically unjustified-if he has so much evidence against it that he should know that it would never occur. You can imagine someone telling this teenager, "Why do you still have hope? That isn't going to happen." Related considerations apply to faith. Consider cases where you ought not desire some outcome, but you desire it anyway, and you have decent evidence the outcome will obtain-e.g. faith that something will happen that will enable you to satisfy a harmful addiction. Here, faith may be epistemically justified, but not practically justified. And faith can also be practically but not epistemically justified. If you have faith that you are much more attractive than you actually are, this might be practically justified if it confers numerous benefits to you, but it may nonetheless be epistemically unjustified, if it is ill-supported by your evidence. Or consider a case of religious faith in which one has little or no evidence that God exists, but continues to have faith in God anyway, because their religion is central to their personal identity and life projects. This faith may be epistemically unjustified but practically justified. And of course, both faith and hope can be practically and epistemically justified, and practically and epistemically unjustified-compare faith or hope that one's loyal spouse is trustworthy to faith or hope that one's magic 8 ball is reliable. This distinction between practical and epistemic justification-and the ways that these can come apart-aids us in answering normative questions about faith and hope. It's plausible that faith/hope's epistemic normative status derives from the attitude's epistemic/cognitive components, and faith/hope's practical normative status derives from the attitude's conative components. This suggests that faith and hope are epistemically unjustified when their cognitive component is unjustified, and practically unjustified when their conative component is unjustified. More controversially, faith and hope may be epistemically justified when their cognitive component is justified, and practically justified when their conative component is justified. This second claim is more controversial for two reasons. One, it's not clear that we can completely rule out the possibility that a conative state can confer epistemic irrationality, or that a cognitive state can confer practical irrationality. It does seem weird to think that, e.g. my hoping that p is practically unjustified because my credence in p is practically unjustified. However, this may be possible on some views on which there are practical reasons for belief-or epistemic reasons for desire. Second, it is more controversial because of what was noted above: simply because its components are justified doesn't make a state overall justified, since we then also need to address, among other things, questions about how those components interact. For these reasons, we can conclude that faith and hope are normally epistemic justified when their cognitive component is epistemically justified, and normally practically justified when their conative component is 8 practically justified. Now, we turn to ways that the propositional/doxastic justification distinction may apply to faith and hope. 4. Proposition and Doxastic Justification Recall that the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is the distinction between having justification to have an attitude and having a justified attitude. An attitude is propositionally, but not doxastically, justified in two main sets of cases: when one has good reasons to have attitude but simply hasn't formed it, or when one has the attitude, but on a poor basis. This distinction is normally applied to belief. But it's not clear why we should limit ourselves to the belief case; the distinction seems to apply just as well to faith and hope. One could have justified faith (or hope) that p, or have justification to have faith (or hope) that p. This distinction also is normally applied only to epistemic justification: traditionally, the distinction brings out two ways that beliefs can be epistemically justified. But when we zoom out to include faith and hope, this raises the question: could this distinction be applied to other kinds of justification, like practical justification? It's hard to see why not. For example, one could have a strong practical reason to have faith or hope that p-and thus have practical propositional justification-but not have practical doxastic justification, simply because one hasn't formed the relevant attitude. Further, it may be that one ignores one's strong practical reasons and instead forms faith or hope on a poor basis. As we'll see soon, spelling out the specifics of this case is less straightforward, but it's not at all clear that this is impossible. This brings out at least four ways an attitude might be justified: Epistemic propositional justification for p: having epistemic justification to have an attitude toward p. Epistemic doxastic justification for p: having an epistemically justified attitude toward p. Practical propositional justification for p having practical justification to have the attitude toward p. Practical doxastic justification for p: having a practically justified attitude toward p. Thus, faith and hope may be justified in any of the four ways above. And the possibility of practical propositional/doxastic justification opens up new options even in the belief case: if there are practical reasons for belief, then beliefs may be practically doxasically or propositionally justified as well. What do these possibilities look like, more concretely? First, as noted above, one can have propositional but not doxastic justification in either sense (epistemic or practical) if one simply fails to form the attitude (belief, faith, or hope) in question. This applies across the board: to all three attitudes, and to practical and epistemic justification. Things get more complex in cases of faith and hope where one lacks doxastic justification because the basing relation isn't met. Let's start with epistemic justification. In the belief case, a common example is wishful thinking: suppose you have a lot of evidence for p, but believe p because you want it to be true. Maybe you have good evidence that your favorite sports will win the national 9 championship, but believe they will win merely because you desire that they win-thus, you lack doxastic (epistemic) justification. When it comes to faith or hope, however, it's less clear that they'd lack doxastic (epistemic) justification in a similar case: compare "you only believe that because you want it to be true" with "you only hope for that because you want it to be true." The former seems to accurately point out a problematic way of believing, but the latter seems odd to say. A desire your team wins doesn't seem like a bad basis for hoping they win. Something similar may be said about faith-a desire may not be a bad basis for faith, or at least, it's worse to base a belief on a desire than to base faith on a desire. This is because faith and hope essentially involve the conative, and belief does not. Thus, wishful thinking may be irrational, but wishful hoping or wishful faith (since faith-ing isn't a word) may not be. So, it is at least possible that faith or hope based on a desire for the proposition in question is epistemically, doxastically justified. What might remove doxastic justification, however, is to base the cognitive components of faith or hope on desire. So, for example, one hopes one's team will win the championship, but one's only basis for thinking this is possible at all is only one's desire for their team to win. Or, alternatively, one has faith that one's team will win with a credence of 0.6, but one's credence is based merely on the desire for their team to win. In these cases, we can suppose that one has the relevant evidence to justify the cognitive components of each attitude (the possibility-belief and the 0.6 credence, respectively), and thus has propositional justification, but lacks doxastic justification for each cognitive component. We'd then need the further premise linking the justification of an attitude as a whole to the justification of its components-so, e.g. if the cognitive component of my faith that p has propositional but not doxastic justification, then my faith that p has propositional but not doxastic justification. And this link seems plausible, at least in certain cases. Thus, faith or hope might enjoy propositional but not doxastic epistemic justification in cases where their cognitive components have poor bases, e.g. wishful thinking. Note, however, that it may be easier for faith and hope to have both propositional and doxastic justification than belief in these cases, as it is easier to obtain both, e.g. justification for a non-zero (0.6) credence and a justified non-zero (0.6) credence than it is to obtain a justified belief or justification to believe. What about practical justification? What would it look like to have practical justification to say, hope that p, without having a practically justified hope that p? Of course, this depends on what practical justification amounts to. At first blush, an attitude is practically, propositionally justified when it is good for an agent, conductive to their flourishing, or coincides with their goals. One question is how much awareness practical propositional justification requires. Does an agent need to intentionally form the attitude due to its benefits to enjoy practical propositional justification? If not, then maybe an agent could form an attitude randomly, or by luck, that happens to be good for them. In this case, they might have practical justification to have an attitude-since the attitude is good for them-but not a practically justified attitude-since they formed it by luck. The chart below summarizes the above discussion. As you can see, many distinctions can be made once we have three attitudes and four senses of justification on the table. It also often seems appropriate to treat faith and hope similarly, since the relevant senses of justification often apply in the same way to both attitudes. Belief that p Faith that p Hope that p Epistemic propositional justification for p A function of the epistemic-requires a good amount of evidence for p. A function of the epistemic-requires a moderate amount of evidence for p. A function of the epistemic-requires only enough evidence for p to make p a live possibility. 10 Epistemic doxastic justification for p Excludes cases where one lacks the attitude and cases where the basing relation isn't met: e.g. wishful thinking. Excludes cases where one lacks the attitude and cases where the basing relation isn't met. When compared to belief, "wishful faith" or "wishful hope" may not be generally irrational, but only problematic when applied to the cognitive components specifically. Practical propositional justification for p Are there practical reasons for belief? If no, this is empty. If yes, depends on what practically justifies belief; may be similar to faith/hope. Depends on your theory of practical justification, but may mean an attitude is good for an agent, conductive to their flourishing, or coincides with their goals. May not require epistemic justification. Practical doxastic justification for p Excludes cases where one lacks the attitude and possible cases where one's attitude isn't based on the fact that they have practical justification for it. 5. Conclusion We've covered the nature of belief, faith, and hope-while belief is an epistemic state, faith and hope have both epistemic and conative components with opposite directions of fit. This sheds light on why it's natural to evaluate faith and hope not just epistemically, but also practically. Bringing in faith and hope to the discussion of propositional and doxastic justification thus highlights additional normative categories, and suggests that practical justification also admits of further precisifications. We've also noted that sometimes faith and hope deserve a separate normative treatment: for example, wishful faith and wishful hope don't lack doxastic justification in the same situations in which wishful belief does. The propositional and doxastic practical justification of belief-if there are practical reasons for belief-also merits further exploration. In conclusion, faith and hope can enjoy propositional and doxastic justification, in both epistemic and practical senses. Our discussion has reinforced the point made in the introduction: justification comes in many forms. Nonetheless, getting clear on the various types of justification enables us to more accurately evaluate in what senses our attitudes are-and are not-justified.8 8 Thanks to Justin D'Ambrosio, Chris Tweedt, Peter Finocchiaro, Rebecca Chan, Allison Thornton, Katie Finley, Callie Phillips, Catherine Rioux, Michael Milona, and Andrew Chignell for helpful discussions about this paper. 11 Works Cited Alston, William. (1996). "Belief, Acceptance, and Religious Faith," in J. Jordan and D. HowardSnyder (eds.), Faith, Freedom, and Rationality pp. 3–27 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Audi, Robert. (1991). "Faith, Belief, and Rationality." Philosophical Perspectives 5: 213–239. Basu, R. & M. Schroeder. (2019). "Doxastic Wronging." B. Kim and M. McGrath (eds.), Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology New York: Routledge. Benton, Matthew. (2019). "Epistemological Aspects of Hope." In C. Blöser and T. Stahl (eds), The Moral Psychology of Hope pp. 135–151. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Benton, Matthew. (Forthcoming). "Knowledge, Hope, and Fallibilism." Synthese <https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1794-8> Blöser, Claudia & Titus Stahl. (2017-a). "Fundamental Hope and Practical Identity." Philosophical Papers 46(3): 345–371. Blöser, Claudia & Titus Stahl. (2017-b). "Hope." In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hope/> Born, Einar Duenger. (2018). "The Logic of Hope: A Defense of the Hopeful." Religious Studies 54: 107–116. Bovens, L. (1999). The value of hope. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 59(3), 667–681. Buchak, Lara. (2012). "Can it be rational to have faith?" In Probability in the Philosophy of Religion (Jake Chandler and Victoria S. Harrison, eds.), pp. 225-247. Oxford: OUP. Calhoun, Cheshire. (2018-a). "Motivating Hope." In C. Calhoun (ed.), Doing Valuable Time: The Present, the Future, and Meaningful Living pp. 68–90 (Oxford: OUP). Calhoun, C. (2018-b). Doing valuable time: The present, the future, and meaningful living. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Chignell, Andrew. (2021). "The Focus Theory of Hope." in N. Snow (ed.), Hope (Oxford: OUP). Day, J.P. (1969). "Hope." American Philosophical Quarterly 6(2): 89–102. Downie, R.S. (1963). "Hope." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 24(2): 248–51. Eriksson, L. and A. Hájek. (2007). "What are Degrees of Belief?" Studia Logica 86(2): 183–213. Fantl, J. and M. McGrath. (2009). Knowledge in an Uncertain World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Firth, Roderick. (1978). "Are Epistemic Concepts Reducible to Ethical Concepts?" In Values and Morals (Alvin Goldman and Jaegwon Kim, eds.), pp. 215–299. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. 12 Gregory, A. (Forthcoming). Wanting is Believing: A Theory of Human Behaviour and its Rationality. Oxford: OUP. Howard-Snyder, Daniel. (2013). "Propositional Faith: What It Is and What It Is Not." American Philosophical Quarterly 50(4): 357–372. Jackson, Elizabeth. (Forthcoming). "Belief, Faith, and Hope." Mind. Jackson, Elizabeth. (2020-a). "The Relationship Between Belief and Credence." Philosophy Compass. 15(6): 1–13. Jackson, Elizabeth. (2020-b). "The Nature and Rationality of Faith." A New Theist Response to the New Atheists (Joshua Rasmussen and Kevin Vallier, eds.), pp. 77–92. New York: Routledge. Jackson, Elizabeth. (2019). "Belief, Credence, and Faith." (2019). Religious Studies. 55(2): 153–168. Kelly, T. (2002). "The Rationality of Belief and Some Other Propositional Attitudes." Philosophical Studies 110(2): 163–196. Leary, Stephanie. (2017). "In Defense of Practical Reasons for Belief." Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95(3): 529–542. Lee, Matthew and Paul Silva Jr. (Forthcoming). "Toward a Lockean Unification of Formal and Traditional Epistemology." Episteme. doi:10.1017/epi.2020.11. Lewis, David. (1988). "Desire as Belief." Mind 97(387): 323–332. Lewis, David. (1996). "Desire as Belief II." Mind 105(418): 303–313. Malcolm, Finlay and Michael Scott (2016). "Faith, Belief, and Fictionalism." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98: 257–274. Martin, Adrienne M. (2013). How We Hope: A Moral Psychology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Marušić, B. and J. Schwenkler. (2018). "Intending is Believing: A Defense of Strong Cognitivism." Analytic Philosophy 59(3): 309–340. McAllister, Blake. (2018). "Seemings as Sui Generis." Synthese 195(7): 3079–3096. McKaughan, Daniel. (2013). "Authentic Faith and Acknowledged Risk: Dissolving the Problem of Faith and Reason." Religious Studies 49: 101–124. Meirav, Ariel. (2009). "The Nature of Hope." Ratio 22(2): 216–33. Milona, Michael. (2019). "Finding Hope." The Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49(5): 710–729. Milona, M. and K. Stockdale. (2018). "A perceptual theory of hope." Ergo 5(8): 203–222. Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 13 Mugg, Joshua. (2016). "In Defence of the Belief-Plus Model of Faith." The European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8(2): 201–219. O'Connor, Timothy & Hong Yu Wong. (2015). "Emergent Properties." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/properties-emergent/> Pettit, P. (2004). "Hope and its place in mind." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 592: 152–165. Pojman, Lewis. (1986). "Faith without Belief." Faith and Philosophy 3(2): 157–176. Preston-Roedder, Ryan. (2018). "Three Varieties of Faith." Philosophical Topics 46(1): 173–199. Price, H. (1989). "Defending Desire-as-Belief." Mind 98: 119–27. Rettler, Bradley. (2018). "Analysis of Faith." Philosophy Compass 13(9): 1–10. Rinard, S. (2018). "Believing for Practical Reasons." Noûs (4) 763–784. Rinard, S. (2019). "Equal Treatment for Belief." Philosophical Studies 176 (7) 1923–1950. Rioux, C. (Forthcoming). "Hope: Conceptual and Normative Issues." Philosophy Compass. Roberts, R. C. (1998). "What an Emotion Is: A Sketch." The Philosophical Review 97(2): 183–209. Saran, Kranti. (2014). "Faith and the Structure of the Mind." Sophia 53: 467–477. Schwitzgebel, E. (2019). "Belief." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/>. Shah, Nishi. (2003). "How Truth Governs Belief." The Philosophical Review 112(4): 447–82. Shah, Nishi. (2006). "A New Argument for Evidentialism." The Philosophical Quarterly 56(225): 481–98. Silva, Paul & Luis R. G. Oliveria. (Forthcoming). "Propositional Justification and Doxastic Justification." In The Routledge Handbook of Evidence (Clayton Littlejohn and Maria LasonenAarnio, eds.). New York: Routledge. Way, J. (2012). "Transmission and the Wrong Kind of Reason." Ethics 122(3): 489–515. Williamson, Timothy. (2000). Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford: OUP.