Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
In ‘Belief-In and Belief in God’ (Religious Studies, 28, 1992), J. N. Williams suggests that belief in God cannot be rational unless one has rational beliefs that God exists. While agreeing with his conclusion (though not with his statement of it), I disagree at almost every step with his method of arriving at it. In particular I suggest that Williams goes astray concerning the dual aspect of belief in, the nature of performatives, the arousal of belief states, and the correct account of belief in God.
1 Williams, J. N., ‘Belief-In and Belief in God’ Religious Studies, xxviii (1992), 401–6. Hereafter otherwise unspecified references to Williams are to this paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 ‘Belief “In” and Belief “That”’, Religious Studies, I, 1965–1966, 5–28Google Scholar, reprinted as series II, lecture IX of his Belief (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), pp. 426–54.Google Scholar
3 High, Dallas M., Language, Persons, and Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 146.Google Scholar
4 Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: University Press, 2nd ed., 1989), belief 1.Google Scholar
5 Religio Medici (London, 1643; reprinted Menston: Scholar Press, 1970), Pt. 1, §46, 107; Pt. 1, §9, 17–18.Google Scholar
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7 MacIntosh, J. J., ‘Belief-In’, Mind, LXXIX (1970), 395–407 (hereafter MacIntosh).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 ‘amicitia quaedam est hominis ad Deum’ (Summa Theologiae 2a2æ 23.1 resp.).
9 Compare Wittgenstein's remark that ‘If there were a verb meaning “ to believe falsely”, it would not have any significant first person present indicative’ (Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), II.x, 190).Google Scholar
10 MacIntosh, 400. Price also made the point that, ‘when the “object” of evaluative belief-in is an entity of any kind’ the believer-in must at least believe that there is such an entity (Belief, p. 437, Price's emphasis.)
11 In ‘Belief-In’ I seem not to have remarked explicitly that I was talking about entities rather than ideals in this context. Presumably I thought, mistakenly as it now appears, that the context would make it clear to readers.
12 That A's believing that A believes p is compossible with A's not believing p is generally accepted, in part, at least, because belief is so heavily intertwined with behaviour. In order to set up a formal system in which (BaBap→Bap) philosophers invoke the notion of an ‘ideal’ or ‘rational’ believer. Specific cases in which the putative entailment breaks down (without recourse to psychological considerations) are considered in MacIntosh, J. J., ‘The Logic of Privileged Access’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, LXI (1983). 142–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Williams, John N., ‘Inconsistency and Contradiction’, Mind, xc (1981), 600–2. That is, belief often does not collect over conjunction; its not distributing over conjunction is also a possible, though less frequent, case.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Marquis, Don, ‘ghosts’, archy and mehitabel (London: Faber & Faber, 1960), p. 114.Google Scholar
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17 Stoppard, Tom, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (London: Faber, 1967), pp. 78.Google Scholar
18 I here follow Williams in using ‘disjunction’. But if something has more than one meaning, doesn't it in fact have a conjunction of meanings?
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20 van Cleve, James, ‘Reliability, Justification, and Induction‘, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, ix (1984), 555–67. 558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 In ‘Belief In’ I used the term performative, as was then common, to refer to what are now more usually called illocutionary acts. Though this is now a fairly standard reading of performative, for a suggestion that it is infelicitous see Urmson, J. O., ‘Performative Utterances’, in French, P. A., Uehling, T. E. Jr and Wettstein, H. K. (eds), Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), pp.260–7.Google Scholar
22 Austin, J. L., How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 65.Google Scholar
23 MacIntosh, p. 399.
24 This is a bit swift, for sentences beginning ‘I know…’ do have, as Austin pointed out, the function of ‘giving others my authority’ for the claim in question (Austin, J. L., ‘Other Minds’, in Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 44–84, 67), but it is clear that whatever the illocutionary force of to know is, it is not that of knowing, so the point remains.Google Scholar For further discussion see Vendler, Zeno, ‘Telling the Facts’, in Kiefer, F. and Searle, J. (eds), Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979)Google Scholar, reprinted in French, P. A., Uehling, T. E. Jr and Wettstein, H. K. (eds), Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), pp. 220–32.Google Scholar
25 Searle, John R. and Vanderveken, Daniel, Foundations of Illocutionary Logic (Cambridge: University Press, 1985), p. 144.Google Scholar
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27 The Taming of the Shrew, II, i, 175–7.Google Scholar
28 Oxford English Dictionary, commend 2, 3.
29 Technically, in the taxonomy of a writer such as John Searle, to praise is an expressive Illocutionary act. Recommending for its part is akin to advising: an example of an English directive. For further details see, e.g. Searle and Vanderveken, Foundations of Illocutionary Logic, ch. 9, ‘Semantical Analysis of English Illocutionary Verbs’. For an interesting discussion of Searle's taxonomy see Alston, William P., ‘Searle on Illocutionary Acts’, in Lepore, E. and van Gulick, R. (eds), John Searle and his Critics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), pp. 57–80.Google Scholar
30 Fodor, Jerry, Psychosemantics (Cambridge, M A: The MIT Press, 1987), p. 13, Fodor's emphasis.Google Scholar
31 Philosophical Studies, lxiii (1991), 1–30.Google Scholar
32 Fallaciously, but often very systematically. See, e.g. Nisbett, R. and Wilson, T., ‘Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes’, Psychological Reviews, xxxiv. (1977), andGoogle ScholarNisbett, R. and Ross, L., Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980).Google Scholar
33 The ‘reasonable man’ rule in the law of torts provides an example here. For a brief but interesting discussion of some of the main philosophical and legal points involved see White, Alan R., Grounds of Liability (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), chs. 6 and 7.Google Scholar
34 Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason, A598 = B626. This type of first-order predicate Kant called ‘determining’ predicates. He held, correctly, that ‘exists’ was not such a predicate.Google Scholar
35 Chillingworth, William, The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1638; reprinted Menston: Scholar Press, 1972), p. 92.Google Scholar
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37 Copleston, F. C., A History of Mediaeval Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1972), p. 37. Copleston continues in a footnote: ‘Given the authority enjoyed by Augustine in the Middle Ages, it required a bold man to say simply “he was wrong” or “he was talking nonsense”. Interpretation was a more prudent policy.’Google Scholar
38 Boyle Papers, vol. 2, f 64. Angle brackets enclose Boyle's inserted ‘existence’, replacing the manuscript's original ‘essence’.
39 I have been helped in writing this paper by suggestions from K. Walde, A. Kazmi, J. Baker, and M. Osier.
