An Epistemological Oddity

So much for peace…I’m afraid that the upcoming move to Scotland has rather snowed us under these last couple weeks. So now I’ll be putting up quite a barrage of posts that have been swimming around in my head, and I haven’t had the chance to put up.

First, a quick response to David Morris's comment about my "Epistemological Epiphany." I have a problem with replying to comments immediately, and so eventually I have to reply in a whole new post, because I figure that no one would ever look down to the old post to find the comment by now.

David suggested that Swinburne's assessment really was accurate, because, if the chips were down, if God asked me which opinion I believed, my own or Dr. Leithart's, I would say, "Dr. Leithart's," since I thought it was more likely to be true. But I really don't think so.

I think (at least, on a number of important issues--say, holiness, or political theology) I would doggedly hold to my own belief, even if on an objective assessment, I thought it more likely on balance that Dr. Leithart was correct, since he was so much more knowledgeable (assuming such an objective assessment were even possible). Now, perhaps I am alone in this. Perhaps I have not discovered an epistemological epiphany, but rather merely that I am an epistemological oddity, thoroughly seduced by Kierkegaard.

But, in any case, my main point is the same as the conclusion David comes to--even though Swinburne's analysis may be correct in certain cases, it is scarcely the whole picture and is of very limited usefulness.

An Epistemological Epiphany

The other day, I woke up and lay in bed reflecting, which is rare for me...normally, I just lie there, doing nothing in particular. But this reflection was particularly interesting...I was thinking about the issues on which I find myself disagreeing with my mentor, Dr. Leithart...issues of ecclesiology, sacramentology, this whole question of holiness, etc. And I realized that, objectively, I believe that, on those issues, it is more likely that he is correct than that I am correct. But I do not therefore cease to disagree and to hold my beliefs.
This was a very striking realization, for it calls into question a fundamental assumption of much epistemology. Richard Swinburne, in particular, in his analysis of Christian belief, argues that to believe in something is to believe that it is more likely to be true than any of the alternatives. If faced with the options of opinion X, and opinion Y, although there may be all kinds of irrational factors influencing my conclusion, I will ultimately judge that, say, opinion Y is more likely to be true than opinion X, and I will thus believe Y. Or, alternatively, I will be unable to judge that either is more likely than the other, and so will withhold belief. For me, at least, this analysis simply doesn't work, and I am highly suspicious that I am not the only one who has encountered such counterexamples.
This suggests that, as I long felt, Kierkegaard is right to insist that faith is a passion, a much more sophisticated bundle of emotion and reason and will than Swinburne's cut-and-dried probability judgments. Way to go Soren!