Three Dimensions Of Belief
Ted Everett
(draft 11/08)
1. Three lousyessays.
Here is an ordinaryessay question on an ethics exam:
Do you believe that the death penalty formurder is ever justified? Why, or whynot?
And here are three little essays in response:
A.Throughout history, most philosophers andother thinkers have supported the death penalty, but today the majority ofexperts are opposed. It seems to me thatthe thinkers of today are usually rightwhen they disagree with thinkers of the past, for example about slavery, butnot always. In light of these facts, I would put the overall probability ofthe death penalty for murder being justified at about twenty or thirty percent.
B. Murderis a supremely wicked act, and people who do wicked things ought to be punishedin proportion to their crimes.Punishment means suffering, so murderers ought to suffer as much aspossible. Dead people do not suffer; therefore,the death penalty for murder is not justified.Instead, murderers ought to be tortured.Ideally, they should be kept alive and tortured forever.
C. I am aChristian pacifist. My family andfriends are all pacifists, and I have lived in a pacifist community all of mylife. We have a great reverence for alllife, inspired by the example of our savior Jesus Christ and many Christian andnon-Christian saints. Therefore, Ioppose the death penalty for murder or any other crime, in accordance with mypersonal commitment to life, love, and universal peace.
None ofthese is a very good essay, but I think that a philosophy professor would bebound to give preference to essay B. It seems unreasonable, perhaps, and hasty, butit at least passes a certain threshold of acceptability that the other twoessays do not, in that it addresses the question in a direct and substantiveway. It deals, however poorly, with someactual arguments in favor of the death penalty, and expresses a conclusionbased on the right general kind of reasoning. It is bad philosophy, but it is at leastphilosophy. By contrast, the other twoefforts do not seem to meet the minimum standards for an essay in philosophy,however brief. Essay A completely fails to address thesubstance of the death penalty issue. Itoffers nothing but the kind of indirect inductive argument that one might makeabout an unread message in a box. Thethird essay, C, is even worse, in away, in that it gives no argument at all, direct or indirect, for its thesis,merely a personal statement of commitment to it. Both seem entirely to miss the point ofwriting an essay in philosophy.
This is notto say that the two rejected essays having nothing in their favor. Indeed, they both present answers to thequestion, "Do you believe that the death penalty for murder is ever justified?",that would be acceptable in many other contexts. Essay Arepresents a fairly common, reasonable attitude toward things of which theauthor admits to knowing very little. Hemay be quite right, at least given how little he actually knows about thesubject, to evaluate the issue only with reference to the opinions of otherpeople who know more. Indeed, thisprobabilistic reasoning is the way that most of us account for issues where wehave no expertise at all, such as the question of life on other planets. If we had just asked the author casually, noton an exam, what he thought or knew about the death penalty, what he says wouldhave been a perfectly acceptable response.Essay C also makes a kind ofstatement that is generally accepted, even respected and admired, outside ofphilosophy (or, more broadly, intellectual debate). We like people who take principled stands onthings, and we like people who state their commitments frankly andconsistently. A pacifist ought tooppose the death penalty, and ought to say so forthrightly. Nevertheless, there is something plainly wrongwith saying so on a philosophy exam, at least by way of complete response.
2. Three rulesgoverning belief.
What isgoing on, here? What accounts for the differentvirtues and vices of these three kinds of statement of belief? I think that there are three quite different,and sometimes conflicting, principles that we all subscribe to when it comes toour beliefs. I will call them thePrinciples of Rationality, Autonomy, and Integrity:
The Principle of Rationality (PR): Believe the truth. If this is not directly knowable, believewhatever is most likely to be true, given the total evidence you haveavailable. More precisely, you shouldbelieve with greater confidence whatever is more likely to be true, given yourpool of available evidence, and you should adjust your confidence accordinglywhenever new evidence is added. Failureto do so makes you irrational.
The Principle of Autonomy (PA): Think for yourself. Do not depend on others for your ownbeliefs. Youmust assume responsibility for your own conclusions, based on the objectiveevidence and arguments available, not just ad hominem considerations. Failure to do so makes you dependent andunproductive.
The Principle of Integrity (PI): Stand up for your beliefs. It is important to make your beliefsconsistent with your most basic commitments, and to make your actionsconsistent with these beliefs. If you believesomething is right, do not equivocate or back down when you are called upon to stateor act on this belief. Failure to do somakes you cowardly and hypocritical.
These rulesare ordinarily consistent with each other.There is no reason in principle why one cannot simultaneously think foroneself, believe what is likely to be true, and act accordingly. Abraham Lincoln believed autonomously,primarily on substantive grounds, that slavery was wicked (PA); this was the most rational conclusion for him to have drawn,given all the evidence available to Lincoln concerning that institution (PR); and he spoke and acted accordingto that belief as well as he could have, given the many constraints on hisactions as President, both from circ*mstances and from his other basiccommitments (PI).
The threeprinciples can, however, and often do, conflict in practice. PRtends to conflict with PA whenever areasonable person has less knowledge than the relevant experts. I do not do my own particle physics, forexample, but defer to physicists for my beliefs about the subatomic world, suchas they are. I let my doctor tell mewhether I am having a heart attack or just acid reflux. I take testimony from my family, friends, andcolleagues about all sorts of matters great and small, relying wholly on myconfidence in them for many of my beliefs, rather than on my own observationsand inferences. In a general way, mydesire to be rational in my beliefs restricts my efforts to think things outfor myself, because I know that other people have a better direct grasp of thetruth of many things than I do.
PR conflicts with PI whenever a rational person has sufficient doubt about something thatthey nevertheless believe. For example, Ibelieve with some modest degree of confidence that Shakespeare's works werelargely written by one Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. That is, I take it as fairly probable, giventhe moderate amount of reading I have done about the subject, that de Vere washeavily involved in these projects, and that the man William Shakespeare was tosome extent a front. But this is not a belief that I stand up forin any way; in fact, I am rather ashamed of it, given the way that mycolleagues have responded on the few occasions that I have had the nerve tobring it up. I do not belong to theOxford Society, or subscribe to any relevant journals or blogs, or go to anyconferences, or even spend much time pursuing the matter. Indeed, I do not seem to have any stake inthis merely probabilistic belief at all, and I do not feel there is anythingthat it requires me to do.
PI also conflicts with PA whenever one's belief, howeversubstantively and autonomously derived, still fails to meet some threshold ofcommitment. Especially when we areworking in a creative or hypothetical context, as in science or philosophy, or,often enough, just in casual conversation, we will throw ideas and argumentsout with little or no sense of personal assurance or ownership. Perhaps this article contradicts other thingsthat I have written in the past – so what?It will still be a good or bad paper on its merits, independently of whowrote it, and I will still have done a good job as a philosopher if it is agood paper, independently of anything else that I believe or have done. The proper question in evaluating me as aprofessional philosopher is not whether I am sincere, or whether I actaccording to what I say in this or any other paper, but whether I am productiveof significant ideas. Even in ordinary,casual discussion, the important question is not always whether we are beingsincere or showing moral worth in any way, but sometimes only whether what wesay is interesting or potentially useful.
It seemsthat there is a mixture of moral and practical concerns that properly governour beliefs, on top of purely epistemic ones.PR is the one purelyepistemic principle. If all you want istrue belief, then you have no need either to think for yourself or to act inany particular way, except as those two principles assist in forming furthertrue beliefs. PA is not about maximizing the likelihood of one's having thecorrect belief, but seemingly rather about coming up with a certain kind ofintellectual product, namely novel or interesting propositions. And PIseems to be a strictly moral principle, governing some but not all relations ofaction to belief. Thus, in the examessays above, A is unacceptabledespite its evident rationality, and Cis unacceptable despite its evident integrity, while B is at least minimally acceptable despite its evident frivolity, becausethe main purpose of writing an essay in school is to develop autonomous ideasbased directly on substantive evidence, so that the student can learn to produceuseful thoughts as an adult.
3. Threedimensions of belief.
What isbelief, then, that it should be pulled in these three different directions? Shall we say that belief is one thing, simultaneouslygoverned by three competing principles?Shall we say that the word belief is ambiguous, and that each principlegoverns its own kind of belief? I wantto say that belief is not one unified thing and not three distinct things, but thatthere are three aspects or dimensions of belief, rather thanthree kinds, in that the concept retains an ultimate unity despite its tendencyto split into three types. It isessential to the total human practice of belief, especially in modernsocieties, that tensions exist among the three dimensions. I will call them perception, opinion, andconviction.
Perception is belief asmental representation. It is theepistemic model of the world that one forms in the first place throughsensations, which are connected by memory and reasoning into something like atotal picture or theory. It includesindirect sensory perception through instruments like glasses and telescopes,and testimonial perception, including reading and all other forms of gatheringsymbolic information. Belief asperception tends to be conditional and probabilistic, and lends itself to constantadjustment through the stream of new experience.
Opinion is belief asdiscursive contribution. In manysituations where decisions need to be made socially, it is important that multipleperspectives be independently represented, to be evaluated as partial oralternative ideas of the way things are or of what ought to be done. There are both practical and intellectualareas where discussion is required, sometimes disciplined, systematicdiscussion as in democratic politics, the law, philosophy, and science. To have an opinion is to be prepared toengage in such discussion. Belief asopinion can be either hedged or categorical, fixed or fluid, depending on thetype of discussion in question.
Conviction is belief aspresupposition for action. One'sconvictions are those perceptions or opinions that one has fixed throughjudgment as not subject to revision or question, at least for the time being. In judging or forming a conviction, onecommits oneself to the truth of a belief, and accepts responsibility for itsintellectual and moral consequences. Aconviction thus acts as both a (partial) cause of decisive action, and as a(partial) explanation for decisive action.Convictions are by their nature categorical rather than conditional orprobabilistic.
My threedimensional system contrasts with the two-level typology of belief that hasbeen developing lately through the work of Ronald de Sousa, Daniel Dennett, andKeith Frankish. These writersdistinguish between "belief" and "opinion", using Dennett'sterms, which seem to have been widely accepted."Belief" is held to be the lower form, corresponding to what Icall perception, and "opinion" the high form, corresponding to what Iam calling conviction. It is a mistake tocall the lower form "belief", I think, because all (two or) three thingsare commonly called belief. It issimilarly misleading to call the higher form "opinion", because ourordinary concept of opinion is of something that often requires littlecommitment, and that need not result in any action other than speech. I say that there are three rather than twoaspects of belief, then, because the essential functions of perception,opinion, and conviction are three, clearly separable things. But I want to call these three dimensionsrather than three types because they are not wholly distinct categories, butoverlap and interact in systematic ways.Some beliefs seem to fall into only one category, but most ordinarybeliefs have all three dimensions. Thereis no saying in such cases what kind of belief it is; rather, the same beliefcan be looked at in each of the three ways.
Here is anexample. I believe that it is good forphilosophy to be taught in colleges.This is a perception of mine, in that I have seen studentsimprove their thinking and become better people through the study ofphilosophy, and also in that I have read a good deal of material touting thevalue of philosophy, and of liberal education in general. It is part of the way I see the world thatpeople's lives are enhanced by the study of philosophy – though a revisablepart, in principle. At the same time,this belief is one of my opinions.It is something that I carry into arguments about curriculum changes atmy college. It is a point that I amprepared to argue for when I am confronted by people who question the value ofphilosophy or liberal education, or wish to impose a more doctrinal, practical,or "consciousness raising" approach to education. I accept that other people will decide overthe long run what is the best way to educate young adults, and that mine isonly one of many perspectives on the topic.Yet it is also one of my convictions that a philosophicaleducation is a good thing. It gets me togo to work in the morning (okay, afternoon), when I don't feel like it, andcould as easily take the day off. Itmotivates me to engage in arguments beyond the level of brainstorming – inother words, to fight – about the future of my college. It impels me to spend more time dealingthoughtfully with students and colleagues, to put up with more stress,embarrassment, and (very occasionally) hostility than I would do if I were notconvinced that this sort of work is important.
I do notordinarily separate out these three aspects of my belief that studyingphilosophy is good for students. I'd justsay that it is one of my beliefs. Yetthere are many cases where a belief serves only one or two of these threefunctions. For example, it is neither anopinion nor a conviction of mine that the population of China is between 450million and 3.2 billion. I have neverarticulated that exact idea at all until just now. Nevertheless, I would say that it expressesone of my (implicit) perceptions, in that it is derived directly from my modelof the world. I don't hold the opinionthat the population of China falls in that range, because there isn't anydebate about the topic, as far as I know.It is just a matter of fact, not, as we say, a matter of opinion (thoughI imagine that there are demographers somewhere who do have opinions about theChinese population, I doubt that this particular belief is one of them). And I would not call it a conviction of minethat China has such-and-such a population, though I still think that it isprobably true. I just don't have anydecisions to make that might be sensitive to such a claim. If some urgent dispute arose about theChinese population, this all could change – but so would the nature of mybelief.
Similarly,there are perceptions and opinions that I have that are not convictions. I mentioned above my guess that Shakespeare'splays were written not by William Shakespeare, but by the 17th Earl ofOxford. This is a probabilisticperception, with a subjective degree of confidence that I would place somewherearound fifty percent. As far as I canrationally determine, the actor Shakespeare might have written the plays himself,or it might have been de Vere, or it might have been Marlowe or one of theother candidates, or, perhaps most likely, some kind of flexiblecollaboration. But I find de Vere a veryplausible main author of the plays, and I think the case for him as author hasbeen overlooked, often for bad reasons, by hidebound and contemptuous academicscholars. So, it has become a point thatI like to argue for. It is thus my opinionthat de Vere is the Shakespearean author, even though I would not be terriblysurprised to be found wrong. It iscertainly not my conviction, however – I am not a convinced"Oxfordian", for I am not convinced of anything about the authorshipquestion. It is a mere opinion.
Here is howI think the three dimensions of belief correspond to the three rules of beliefdefined above: PR regulates perception; PAregulates opinion, and PI regulatesconviction.
PR regulates perception in that thegoal of perception is an adequately complete and reliable model of the worldand its workings. This requires that wegather large amounts information through the senses, including throughtestimonial and other indirect sources, and work this information rationallyinto the most likely-to-be-true available theory of the world (in fact, asystem of probabilized alternative theories), maximally sensitive to rationalcombination with all new experience. TheBayesian account of evidence absorption through adjustments in subjective conditionalprobabilities seems to be the right account of rationality for belief asperception.
PA regulates opinion in that the purposeof having opinions is to provide diverse hypotheses for that “continuous andfearless sifting and winnowing by whichalone the truth can be found” (Wisconsin).This means that people must be creative in their thinking asindividuals, in order to be rational as groups.Only people who think for themselves can fully participate in thissocial process, thus it is necessary for people to be taught to think forthemselves, even when this flies in the face of rational probability, asbetween essays A and B above. The virtue of belief as opinion is insight, notaccuracy, and insight can only come from largely independent points of view.
PI regulates conviction in that thepurpose of having convictions is to stop thinking and act in a determined andconsistent way. A person with integrityis someone whose beliefs on certain matters of importance are held fixed, sothat the person can be counted on by others as a reliable agent, and can counton himself to execute long range plans without potentially destructive levelsof doubt. The virtue of belief as convictionis neither insight nor accuracy, but stability, which sometimes requires thesuspension of one’s ordinary rational and creative faculties.
Here is howI think the three principles and three dimensions of belief all interactideally. Imagine sending a group ofsmall robots to explore a distant planet, so distant that there is no effectivemethod of Earthly control over the robots once they depart, and no expectationof receiving back anything more than an eventual final report of theirdiscoveries. How would we design theserobots? One possibility is to create asystem of interlinked, partly but not entirely autonomous explorers, heldtogether by some means of forming a collaborative picture of this foreignworld. Each robot comes with a set of sensorydevices; each can independently create a partial map and partial analysis ofthe large planetary surface. Each isalso equipped with devices for communication, so that a total theory can bebuilt out of these parts. Simple enough,if all robots are exactly the same in design, and the parts of the totalpicture can just be added together without conflict. This produces no “disputes”, but it leavesopen the possibility that something important in sensation or analysis will bemissed by each, hence by all, of the robots.A more sophisticated system, and one with a greater chance of findingout the truth about this planet, would send robots of various differentdesigns, with somewhat different sensory devices and analytical software, eachcapable in its own way of downloading and combining information from the othermodels. It would be important for eachrobot to “respect” the “opinions” of its fellows, but not to the extent thatit* own tentative analysis is easily overwhelmed by an emerging consensus. Thus each robot should be programmed to be“rational” in treating the reports of other robots, but not too rational, incase its own minority “opinion” should be the one that works best in the longrun. Thus, each robot ought at least tostore its own tentative analysis, along with combining and compromising into agroup picture. If the planet is a toughone to understand, a good variety ofhypothetical approaches should be maintained, at least until the same overalltheory finds ready acceptance among all the robots as individuals.
4. Three central problems with belief among humans.
There are three central problemswith human understanding of the world we live in. I do not see any principled way to solvethem. Here they are.
Problem 1. Our individual perceptions are limited by humansize, lifespan, and resources. There istoo much in the world for any one person to know. Therefore, intellectual life must somehow besocial. Our private perceptions mustgive way to public opinions in the realms of controversy.
Problem 2. Our individual opinions are easily overwhelmedby the testimony of others, either through the others’ greater provenreliability (especially when we are children), through their greater acknowledgedexpertise, or simply through their greater numbers. A perfectly rational believer is far too likelyto conform to the beliefs of those around him.Therefore, we must be taught to uphold our own beliefs as convictions.
Problem 3. Our individual convictions are liable to befalse, and to involve us in violent error in the world. To the extent that we all stick to our guns,we resist reasonable compromise and consensus.Yet without such personal convictions, we risk falling into staticschools of thought, even potentially absurd ones, from which the individual hasno rational means of escape.
The first problem necessarilysubordinates our own beliefs to those of others, in the interests of learningfrom others in the short run, and of producing more true beliefs for everybodyin the long run. How do we handle thissubordination? I think that the naturalthing, something terribly hard for us all to resist, is for consensus todevelop around the views of the majority of experts or elders on anytopic. This is why religion, notphilosophy or science, is the normal framework for belief throughout thehistory of the world. In order forphilosophy or science to develop at all, some sufficient number of individualsmust become what I have elsewhere called epistemic altruists, that is,people who believe in their own view of things despite its being more rationalfor them to accept the testimony of their peers and elders. This has happened only a few times inhistory, and only once has it produced a seemingly permanent institution ofprogressive thought, namely in modern Western Europe and its colonies. Even here, though, and even amoung the peoplemost proud of their principled independence of mind, there is constant pressureto regress back into static and intolerant “paradigms” or schools ofthought. Galileo was famously draggedback by his contemporaries into acknowledging the primacy of Church doctrineover independent science. Darwin wasterrified of what would happen to his reputation among his Victoriancontemporaries that he held his theory in a drawer for decades until forced bylooming competition to release it.Einstein began campaigning against radical quantum mechanics almost assoon as his own radical relativity had been accepted. In psychology, one domineering paradigmsucceeds another every thirty years or so, with fairly brief eclectic periodsin between. Most recently, the Westernsocial sciences seem to have evolved a consensus on a rigid ethnic and genderegalitarianism in response to moral pressure from contemporary movements forcivil rights, and even the physical sciences seem to have frozen up somwhatbecause of the involvement of so many scientists with environmentalism. Thus it is a danger to the careers ofscientists to doubt in public the hypothesis that men and women have identicalintellectual capacities, or the hypothesis that global warming is a man-madecrisis. Most scientists who poke theirheads up on these issues have been quickly brought to heel; the few who maintaina principled, public independence on these issues have been ostracized to theextent that only genuine cranks are likely these days to oppose to dominantpositions. From within the relevant consensusmovements, such suppressions of dissent seem like rational demands forindividuals to respect the institution of science itself. And they are rational demands – in my view,this is the main problem. Only atolerance for irrational dissent allows us to progress beyond the localperspectives of any given age. But toomuch tolerance promotes irrationality and anarchy in general, where “independentthinkers” like L. Ron Hubbard (or, for that matter, Charles Manson) would be acceptedas the equals of Watson and Crick. Whatis needed is some sort of balance in the individual and in the intellectualsociety. None of the three basicproblems of belief can be solved decisively.We must be as rational as possible for current needs, consistently withmaximizing forward-looking creativity and fostering the kind of principledindependence that resists our natural descent into the gravitation of consensustheories.
