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The Logic of ‘Solemn’ Believing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

W. D. Robinson
Affiliation:
Part-time Tutor in Philosophy, Adult Education Department, Southampton University

Extract

It is sometimes suggested that the logic of religious language differs from other kinds of language. Or it is said that each ‘language-game’ has its own ‘logic’ and that, whatever usual language-games are played in the context of religion, there is something that could be called the ‘religious language-game’ which does not correspond to any other and, therefore, has its own peculiar logic. In either case, religious people are urged to make clear what this logic is, so that their utterances may be understood and evaluated.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

page 409 note 1 These two claims are often confused; cf. Bell, R. H., Religious Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Oct. 1969), pp. 5 ff., 12 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an elucidation of the distinction.

page 409 note 2 Belief (London, 1969), p. 40.Google Scholar Price is there concerned with degrees of belief, and claims that the solemn usage does not admit of degrees, a point to which I return in section iii.

page 409 note 3 The question whether the psychological condition, shared by knowing and completely certain believing, should be described as complete confidence or as an absence of doubt, does not, I think, affect our present discussion; see Price, , Belief, pp. 280, 282–5.Google Scholar

page 409 note 4 Price says this about ordinary, as opposed to solemn, belief; Ibid. pp. 39–41.

page 410 note 1 Cf. Harrison, J., ‘Does Knowing imply Believing?’, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 53 (Oct. 1963), p. 322CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘…an emotional and/or behavioural core, which knowing and believing have in common’.

page 410 note 2 Prichard, H. A., Knowledge and Perception (1950), pp. 8591, 96–7Google Scholar, reprinted as ‘Knowing and Believing’, in Knowledge and Belief, ed. Griffiths, A. P. (Oxford, 1967), pp. 60–8.Google Scholar

page 410 note 3 ‘Knowledge and Belief’, in Knowledge and Belief, ed. Griffiths, , pp. 6981Google Scholar, reprinted from Malcolm, N., Knowledge and Certainty (New Jersey, 1963), original edition published in Mind, Vol. 51 (1952), pp. 178–89Google Scholar. Later discussion seems to have suggested that Malcolm may have been driving a wedge between the subjective and objective conditions of knowledge; see articles by Harrison, J. and Taylor, R. in Analysis, Vol. 13 (19521953)Google Scholar and by Malcolm, N. and Taylor, R. in Analysis, Vol. 14 (19531954).Google Scholar

page 410 note 4 Evans, J. L. says that we may confuse thinking that we know with error, but not with belief: ‘…in mistaken belief, on the other hand, we do not mistake one state of mind for another; we do not claim to know, and so we are aware of the possibility that we may be wrong…Belief, since it is not a claim to know, strictly cannot be erroneous, even where what we believe to be true is false.’ ‘Error and the Will’, Philosophy, Vol. xxxviii, No. 144 (April 1963), p. 143.Google Scholar

page 410 note 5 Op. cit. p. 323.

page 410 note 6 When somebody expresses doubts about something, p, which we think we know, we often reply, ‘Well, I believe that p’, where it is clear that (a) we are completely confident that p; (b) our reasons for thinking p are completely convincing to us. In addition, (c) we may in fact be right; p may be true. Clearly, in this case, ‘I believe that p’ (q) would be true by condition a; also ‘I know that p’ (r) would be true by conditions a, b and c. It follows that ˜ (q → (˜ r)). The only escape from this conclusion would be to claim that ‘I believe that p’ cannot mean ‘I am completely confident that p’; but this, whatever gain in clarity it may have to recommend it, would be a redefinition demanding a revision of actual usage.

page 411 note 1 Wittgenstein, L., Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief ed. Barrett, C. (Oxford, 1970), pp. 53 ff.Google Scholar

page 411 note 2 Ibid. p. 58.

page 411 note 3 Cf. Ibid. pp. 54, 57 f., 58 f.

page 411 note 4 Cf. Ibid. pp. 55, 56, 71.

page 411 note 5 Cf. Ibid. p. 57.

page 412 note 1 E.g. I John 4.16; cf. II Timothy 1.12 (oida).

page 412 note 2 E.g. Flew, A. G. N., God and Philosophy (London, 1966), 6.4, 6.6, 6.12, 6.13; cf. 1.7Google Scholar; and Martin, C. B., Religious Belief (New York, 1962), pp. 66 ff.Google Scholar

page 413 note 1 While the pisteuein eis and the absolute forms may predominate, the pisteuein hoti form is by no means absent; e.g. Matthew 9.28; John 11.42, 27, 13.19, 19.30 (Acts 8.37); Romans 6.8, 10.9; Hebrews 11.6.

page 413 note 2 E.g. oida, etc.: John 4.42; Romans 7.18; Philippians 1.16; ginoskein: John 6.69; James 5.20. For a full review of New Testament usage see Weiser, A. and Bultmann, R., Faith (E.T. 1961).Google Scholar

page 413 note 3 So Price, , ‘“Belief-in” and “Belief-that”’, in Religious Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Oct. 1965), pp. 5 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Belief, pp. 426 ff.

page 414 note 1 I am here deliberately avoiding the question of whether evidence is ever a matter of brute fact, independent of some pattern of interpretation to which one is more or less committed; see Harris, Errol E., Hypothesis and Perception (London and New York, 1970).Google Scholar However, I confess to the inclination to regard extremely reductive empiricism as damaging to our understanding of meaning and truth; probably as damaging as ‘single-shot’ scientific technology has been to our culture and environment. In both the single, simple, clear ‘solution’ only leads astray.

page 415 note 1 Price, Contra, Belief, p. 40.Google Scholar Perhaps Price's own later distinction between confidence and assent should be applied here also.

page 415 note 2 E.g. I Corinthians 15.10; Galatians 2.20; Philippians 2.12 f.

page 416 note 1 Of religious (New Testament) knowledge, Bultmann has said: ‘This knowledge (whether epignosis or gnosis) scarcely differs in substance from faith, except that it emphasizes the element of knowing which is contained in the very structure of faith.’ Bultmann, R., The Theology of the New Testament (E.T.), vol. ii, p. 128Google Scholar, quoted Baillie, J., The Sense of the Presence of God (London and Toronto, 1962), p. 4.Google Scholar Of religious belief John Baillie said: ‘In the New Testament to know God and to have faith in him are often hardly more than two ways of saying the same thing. And yet this knowledge that is faith is not the best kind of knowledge. The concept of faith always contains both the idea of knowing and the idea of not knowing fully.’ Ibid. pp. 4 f.