Abstract
The point of departure of this paper is a conception of faith that is broader than traditional conceptions on which it is essentially doxastic. On the theory presupposed here, neither propositional faith (faith that) nor attitudinal faith (faith in) entails belief. Faith is also irreducible to hope, though it is not without some kinship to it. More positively, on the view presented here, faith entails a set of positive attitudes of a certain kind. This positive element makes it natural to consider faith a kind of stance toward its object. That conception, in turn, indicates the presence of volitional elements in faith. With these points in view, the paper pursues in detail the kinds of volitional elements that are essential in faith or, at least, characteristic of certain major kinds of faith. The conception of faith as a kind of volitional stance helps to explain both the importance of faith—secular as well as religious—in human life and the resilience of faith in the encounter with counterevidence.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
That propositional faith does not entail belief (belief simpliciter as opposed to some ‘degree of belief’) is a view I have argued since at least the middle 1980s and in various publications beginning in 1991. See also William P. Alston, ‘Belief, Acceptance, and Religious Faith,’ in Jeff Jordan and Daniel Howard-Snyder, eds., Faith, Freedom, and Rationality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield), 1996, 3–27; Lara Buchak, ‘Can It Be Rational To Have Faith,’ in Jake Chandler and Victoria Harrison, eds., Probability in the Philosophy of Religion (OUP 2012), 225–246; Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘Propositional Faith: What it is and What it is Not,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 50, 4 (2013), 357–372; and Daniel McKaughan, ‘Authentic Faith and Acknowledged Risk: Dissolving the Problem of Faith and Reason,’ Religious Studies 49 (2013), 101–124.
My most recently published work on faith is chapter 3 of Rationality and Religious Commitment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011), and the work that offered a preliminary sketch—refined and extended here—of a volitional concept of faith is ‘The Dimensions of Faith and the Demands of Reason,’ in Eleonore Stump, ed., Reasoned Faith (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1993), 70–89.
For a sustained discussion of faith in relation to Mark, see Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘Markan Faith,’ forthcoming in the International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion. Howard-Snyder’s paper may be of special interest because he seeks to show compatibility with the text of the view of faith I have long defended.
For quotations indicating some of the caricatures by prominent writers, see Howard-Snyder, ‘Propositional Faith,’ cited above in footnote 1, 368–69.
Granted, in many contexts saying that someone has faith in (e.g.) God carries the presupposition that God exists, but there is a use of ‘S has faith in God’ whose truth conditions concern only S’s psychology.
I argued for this in, e.g., ‘Faith, Belief, and Rationality,’ Philosophical Perspectives V (1991) 213–239. See also the papers by Howard-Synder and McKaughan, cited earlier, and Daniel Howard-Snyder, ‘Does Faith Entail Belief?,’ Faith and Philosophy 33 (2016), 142–162. I consider fiducial faith compatible with ‘partial belief’ as sometimes understood and with credences well below 1 toward the relevant proposition. But I do not consider those terms clearer or otherwise preferable to those I use. Buchak and others, however, have clarified those terms in relation to faith in a way that supports my position here.
There may be a kind of trusting in, as there are cases of trusting that, which is doxastic. But I do not take all cases of trust—at least propositional trust—to entail belief.
Fred Dretske argued against this entailment as long ago as Seeing and Knowing (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), and I have argued against it extensively and in different ways, e.g. in Moral Perception (Princeton UP 2013).
This applies to faith simpliciter, not to those special cases in which faith constitutes a virtue. There, the person must be guided by objective values—in ways I have indicated in providing an account of faith as a virtue. See my ‘Faith, Faithfulness, and Virtue,’ Faith and Philosophy 28, 3 (2011), 294–311.
Here, as elsewhere my space does not permit comparison with other views on this matter. See, however, Richard Swinburne, Faith and Reason (Oxford UP 1981) and John Schellenberg, Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2005).
My view contrasts markedly with that of William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience delivered at Edinburgh in 1901–1902 (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902): ‘The mystic is, in short, invulnerable, and must be left whether we relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment of his creed... Faith-state and mystic state are practically convertible terms.’ See ‘Is Mystical Experience Veridical?,’ 379–430. The term ‘faith-state’ is highly specific and, as used by James here, does not correspond to anything essential to even religious faith though it may designate a kind of condition characteristic of some religious experiences.
There is no reason to think that the changes in the agent that differentiate hope, fiducial faith, and belief need affect the content of the attitude in question, reduce its positivity, or, as argued by Finlay Malcolm and Michael Scott in ‘Faith, Belief, and Fictionalism,’ imply or welcome ‘fictionalist faith.’ See Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (2016), DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/papq. 12,169. There is also no reason to deny that some kinds of hope may have so much in common with instances of fiducial faith at the lower limits of its convictional strength that they constitute borderline cases.
The question of the relation of faith to evidence raises the question of its compatibility with knowledge. I doubt that knowledge that p entails having evidence for p or implies psychological certainty that p. It is true that we do not normally ascribe both knowledge that p and faith that p to the same person at the same time and that these views appear incompatible, as Kant apparently held. But I am not committed to this view, as indicated in ‘Faith, Belief, and Rationality’ (1991).
See H. J. Paton trans., Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (London: Hutchinson, 1956), sec. 394, p. 62.
Arguably, wholly sectorial faith is reducible to a conjunction or, at best, an integrated group, of propositional faiths, but perhaps this does not hold in all cases of multi-sector faith.
As I have done at some length in Rationality and Religious Commitment (cited earlier).
That faith has the positivity I describe and is often emotional, sometimes ardent, and may raise the question of what connections exist between faith and love. Like faith, love is not meritarian: we do not love in proportion to or even on the basis of merit. We need not have faith in those we love, but we tend to want to have it and to be disappointed if we cannot. Even if we believe they will not flourish, we tend to have a positive attitude toward their flourishing and in general would like to have faith that they will. Love is also similar to faith in evidential responsiveness, but more tolerant of the negative, e.g. where the beloved does not do what one wants or would like, or turns out not to have the traits for which one loves—if such there be.
Many ethical theorists, partly influenced perhaps by Hume’s motivational internalism or elements in Aristotle’s virtue ethics (or both), hold that believing (or at least judging) that something is good entails having positive motivation toward it. I do not accept an entailment here, but there normally is such a connection in rational persons.
For ways to see how this may hold, see Michael Rea, ‘Divine Love and Personality,’ Lecture III of his Gifford Series, forthcoming from Oxford UP.
This paper has benefited from presentations at the Pacific APA, the Notre Dame Center for Philosophy of Religion, and the University of Texas, San Antonio, as well as from comments by Daniel Howard Snyder and, especially, an anonymous reader for Sophia.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Audi, R. Faith, Belief, and Will: Toward a Volitional Stance Theory of Faith. SOPHIA 58, 409–422 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0653-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0653-x